Subterranea 24 (September 2010)

Brunei's Thames Tunnel
Inchindown Fuel Depot
Hendon Air-Raid Shelter Excavation
Maastricht Trip Report 2010

Subterranea Britannica

www.subbrit.org.uk

Subterranea Britannica is a society devoted to the study of man-made and man-used underground structures and the
archaeology of the Cold War. In the case of Cold War structures studies are entirely confined to declassified and
decommissioned structures. The society is open to all and its membership includes all walks of life. Members are invited to
contribute to this magazine even if this just means sending very welcome snippets from newspapers and magazines.

Editor: Nick Catford 13 Highcrofi Cottages London Road Swanley Kent BR8 8DB
e-mail editor@subbrit.org.uk

Contents

From the Chairman_ 1

Dates for Your Diary_ 1

Digest of Committee Meeting 26 June 2010 _ 2

News

Health and Safety_ 3

Archaeology_ 3

Defence & Military_ 4

Tunnels_ 7

Mines & Mining_10

Miscellaneous_11

Publications _11

Features

Sunny Hill Park air-raid shelter, Hendon _13

A Blast from the Past (Thames Tunnel 1869-1969) 16
Tunnel Vision - First Underwater Thames Crossing 18

Brunei’s Thames Tunnel Walk-2010_19

There was oil in them there hills, Inchindown_22

Jessica s mountain revisited, Sweden_31

Return trip to the Warding Bunker_37

Sub Brit Maastricht Trip Report 2010_40

Unusual underground air-raid shelter, Ipswich _47

West German Civil Defence Warning Centres _49

Geological Survey in WWII _50

Canal Tunnels_51

Diefenbunkers _53

Front cover photo: One of three 75mm quick-firing cannons in the 'Vise 1' blockhouse at Fort Eben-Emael.

The Vise blockhouse gave protection to the south overlooking the Vise Gap.

Back upper: The air conditioning plant room in the Warding rotor bunker in October 1997.

By the time the bunker was pumped in 2004 the water had almost reached the ceiling.
Above two photos by Nick Catford

Back lower: View down the access pipe showing the scale of the tanks at the Inchindown fuel depot.

Leaning against the side walls is the racking approximately 5m apart which supported the heating pipes.
Copyright: Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland
Officers Editorial Team

Honorary President: Prof. C. T. Shaw Editor of Subterranea: Nick Catford

Chairman: Martin Dixon Editorial Assistants: Martin Dixon & Linda Bartlett

Vice Chairman: Linda Bartlett
Secretary: Roger Starling
Membership: Nick Catford
Treasurer: Sue Monsell

Layout: Martin Snow
Graphics: Tim Robinson
Proof reading : Stewart Wild

Committee

Bob Templeman
Paul W. Sowan
Hugh Ainsley
Andrew Smith

Ex Officio

Gavin Saxby: Webmaster - Mailing list manager
Tim Robinson: SB Meetings

Newsletters of Subterranea Britannica are published by the committee of Subterranea Britannica. Original articles,
book reviews, press cuttings, extracts from books and journals, letters to the Editor etc are welcome.
However the Editor reserves the right not to publish material without giving a reason.

The committee of Subterranea Britannica and the Editor do not necessarily agree with
any views expressed and cannot always check the accuracy of any material sent in.

Printed by Hillary Press Ltd. 75 Church Road Hendon London NW4 4DP
Telephone: (020) 8203 4508 Fax: (020) 8203 0671

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Registered Office: 5 Railway Cottages. Old Station Way, Bordon, Hampshire GU35 9HH

Chairman’s Welcome

Martin Dixon

Underground resources have catalysed or underpinned
all significant technology-driven changes in mankind’s
history. The trio of ancient Ages - Stone, Bronze and
Iron - all relied on minerals extracted from within the
earth to manufacture tools and implements.

The industrial revolution relied on coal and iron ore to
power its way through the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. In more recent times plastics, nuclear power
and electronics each depend on materials harvested from
within, often deep within, the earth’s crust.

So, what is being done to protect our underground
heritage? Built structures - whether civil or military -
can be protected by listing, but by and large mines and
quarries do not qualify as ‘buildings’, although surface
features and perhaps portals do. Instead, the extractive
industries have had to rely on Scheduling as Ancient
Monuments for protection. As Listed Buildings outnumber
Scheduled Ancient Monuments by a factor of around
20:1, it’s obvious that it is more difficult to satisfy the
criteria for protection.

The good news is that the draft Heritage Protection Bill
will bring all forms of protection (including UNESCO

World Heritage sites) together and the list of newly
defined ‘heritage structures’ explicitly includes caves and
excavations alongside more traditional ‘buildings’. In
addition, it is clearly stated that structures are covered
whether above or below the surface of the ground
and whether or not to any extent submerged.
Although the legislation needed to pass the 2008 Bill has
been delayed, English Heritage (EH) ran a number of
pilot projects to test the new system. It is encouraging to
see that sites of interest to Sub Brit are included as pilots,
amongst them Piccadilly Line stations and RAF
Scampton.

Sub Brit is currently contributing to the EH National
Heritage Protection Plan which again includes specific
reference to the protection of underground sites. We’re
also involved in the EH Research Framework on
Extractive Industries which aims to set the agenda for
future study in the mining area.

Legal Registers are not a panacea for site preservation
but if the Heritage Protection Bill becomes enacted then
the future looks rosier for those who cherish our
underground legacy.

chairman@subbrit.org.uk

r

SUBTERRANEA BRITANNICA DIARY

Summary of Forthcoming Events 2010
Sub Brit specific events

18 September Paddock (standby Cabinet War Room) Open Day Dollis Hill
25 September Visit to Neatishead Radar Museum & Bunker
25 September Sub Brit visit to London Transport Acton Depot
9 October SB Committee Meeting, Ascot
16 October SB Autumn Day Meeting , High Wycombe
1 November Deadline for Subterranea #25

Other underground-related events

16-17 October London Transport Depot Special Open Weekend, Acton
18-19 September London Open House, including Paddock
19 September London Canal Museum Guided Tunnel Boat Trip
Booking recommended 020 7713 0836
24 - 26 September Hidden Earth Conference, Leek
29 September History of East London Line.

A Rotherhithe & Bermondsey Local History Group Talk 7.45pm
16-17 October London Transport Depot Special Open Weekend, Acton
27 October Cemeteries of South London
A Rotherhithe & Bermondsey Local History Group Talk 7.45pm
24 November Sewerage in London: Past, Present & Future
A Rotherhithe & Bermondsey Local History Group Talk 7.45pm

2011

29 July - 1 August NAMHO Conference, Shrewsbury

1

Digest of Subterranea Britannica Committee Meeting held on 26 June 2010

The meeting was chaired by Martin Dixon, with five other
members of the committee present, at Kelvedon Hatch, by
kind permission of its owner, Mike Parrish and arranged by
Robin Cherry. Kelvedon Hatch Bunker had three main lives;
initially as an RAF ROTOR Station and latterly a Regional
Government Headquarters, with a brief period in the 1960s as
a civil defence centre.

There were no H&S incidents to report on since the last meeting
in January. The Committee emphasised that it was the role of
the leader of a trip to determine whether attendees were fit to
undertake the visit.

Charitable status. Sue Monsell reported on the submission
which has recently been made. The submission form itself did
not ask for much info about the society; so, not surprisingly,
the Commission have come back and asked for more details
about our society. Martin & Sue will work on a suitable
response.

Day Meetings. Tim Robinson was thanked for arranging the
April meeting; this was his first as Meeting Organiser and had
gone well, with all costs covered. The next one is booked at
Bucks University in High Wycombe. The committee decided
to introduce a small premium for ‘on-the-day’ attendance, to
encourage more attendees to pre-book. This will help get the
catering arrangements right and reduce admin on the day.
Booking for the next Meeting will be by means of an online
form, rather than hardcopy forms sent out with Subterranea.
This will reduce costs and should be easier for many members.
Visits Weekends 2010. 36 people attended the weekend in
Maastricht in May 2010 arranged by Joep Orbons, Linda
Bartlett and Paul Sowan. All went well, with good feedback
apart from the ‘basic’ accommodation. The weekend made a
small surplus for Sub Brit, due to a better than budget exchange
rate with the Euro. Linda and Martin Dixon are arranging the

next weekend in Cornwall in September; planning is going
well and 45 people are booked to attend.

V isits Weekends 2011. It is proposed to investigate the
possibility of a weekend in Sweden for members. For the UK
weekend, Manchester area is the first choice, with Liverpool
and North Wales as options.

Site Visits. The committee were pleased to note the high
number of site visits for members arranged this year so far
(nearly 20) and will encourage members to continue to arrange
more trips.

Sub Brit web site. We all acknowledged that the web is looking
a little tired and are keen to refresh its appearance and content.
Martin agreed to meet with members of the web team soon to
discuss the plan of action, which will include new features.
Questionnaire. We'd like to know more about what our
members value from the society and to detemiine what else we
could do to improve the quality and range of activities
and services that the society provides. We’ve drafted a
questionnaire and will refine this before issuing to members in
the near future; we hope this will also encourage more
participation in the running of the society.

Subterranea. It was noted that the ‘Corsham special’ has been
very well received: we decided on a number of approaches to
sell some of the extra copies we had printed.

Miscellaneous. Martin will respond to the National Heritage
Protection Programme online questionnaire. The committee
agreed that SB’s strategy will be to support any national bodies
in the protection and preservation of underground spaces.
Martin will also write on behalf of SB in support of the Peak
District Mining Museum in Matlock, whose historic Spa
Pavilion building is under threat.

The next meeting will be on 9 October 2010.

Subterranea Britannica Autumn Meeting
Saturday 16 October 2010 @ 10.00

Bucks New University, Queen Alexandra Road,

High Wycombe, Bucks HP11 2JZ
Owen Harris Lecture Theatre

Speakers: Bob Flanagan - West Norwood Cemetery
Others to be confirmed

To book please download the booking form from www.subbrit.org.uk
Alternatively, if you require a form by post, please send a stamped addressed envelope to
Tim Robinson 8 St James Avenue, Whetstone, London N20 0JT

There are 3 cost options for the day;

£17.00 advance booking / £20.00 on the day / £22.00 to include buffet lunch
Please note we cannot provide buffet lunch if you pay on the day

Instructions will be sent out 2 weeks prior to the event.

Postal bookings close on October 12 2010

Any queries, please contact Tim Robinson on tim.robinson@pro-net.co.uk

NEWS

What are former SB officers doing now?

Activities down at Reigate

Honorary Members Malcolm and Barbara Tadd (former
joint Secretaries) remain active in and around Reigate
and its rock-cut ‘caves’ and silver sand mines, under the
auspices of the Wealden Cave and Mine Society, of which
Malcolm is President. Jointly with Paul Sowan (former
Chairman) they look after house-keeping at the ‘caves’,
which principally means clearing rubbish thrown into the
Barons’ Cave.

The World War II display in the Tunnel Road West mine
now has a Morrison shelter installed, reconstructed from
original parts (with a few new bits) by Malcolm, Paul
and fellow SB member John Collett. Getting the rebuild
correct involved visits to the Imperial War Museum’s
splendid library to consult original documentation. Also
consulted was Paul's childhood memory of the war years,
as he slept (with both parents and his little brother) in a
Morrison shelter in the sitting room. He was in this shelter
when his home was narrowly missed by a V1 flying bomb,
and also by a V2 rocket!

NEWS - HEALTH & SAFETY

Health & Safety: new investigations concerning
the carbon dioxide hazard underground

Normal atmospheric air contains about 0.04% carbon
dioxide, whereas exhaled air contains up to 6%. Despite
the fact that we are constantly breathing this out, the
relatively dense gas is seriously dangerous to health and
life if it accumulates in any confined space. The Health
& Safety Executive suggests that 0.5% should be the
maximum level for an eight-hour working day, and 1.5%
as the absolute maximum in any work place for any length
of time.

Fortunately, the human body responds to higher than
desirable concentrations, so potential victims are aware
something is wrong. At levels above 1% respiration rate
increases during exertion. Above 2% breathlessness
increases and headaches are common. At 3% a person
experiences difficulties in breathing, and at 5%
disorientation and chesty muscle pains occur. From 7.5%
to 10% work becomes impossible and death will occur
unless help is immediate.

The sources of underground carbon dioxide are:

• Exhaled air

• Decomposition of rotting timber or other organic matter

• Plant roots and soil organisms

Inadequately ventilated, small, dead-end spaces, and the
lowest points in tunnel systems should be treated with
particular caution, as should vertical shafts in which
carbon dioxide may well be ponded.

SOURCE: NEWPORT. Aubrey, 2009, Bad air in caves.
Descent 211, page 19.

Collapse in Cwmorthin underground Slate Quarry,
North Wales

There has been a collapse of rock in the floor 2 adit at
Cwmorthin slate quarry near Blaenau Ffestiniog. This
extensive site has six accessible underground floors, some
of the very large chambers being partially flooded. The
quarry was worked from the early nineteenth century
and, on a small scale, on and off into the 1980s. Visit
www.cwmorthin.co.uk for further information.

(ANON, 2009, Take care in Cwmorthin.) Descent 211,
page 16.

Revised safety regulations proposed for the
Channel Tunnel

An Intergovernmental Commission has reviewed and
reported on revisions to safety regulations for the tunnel,
and w ill be discussing these with the tunnel operators.
Eurotunnel. Passenger trains shorter than 375 metres (the
distance between the running tunnel-to-service tunnel
escape passages) will not be allowed into the Channel
Tunnel unless they have provision for passengers to walk¬
through the train. Trains are to be capable of withstanding
fire for a minimum of 30 minutes and, in the event of an
onboard fire, are to be driven out of the tunnel, not brought
to a halt within it. The normal tunnel transit time for
Eurostar passenger trains is 20 minutes, and for car
shuttles 30 minutes. New' fire suppression systems are
to be installed. Diesel trains remain banned.

SOURCE: FENDER. Keith, 2010. Revised Channel
Tunnel safety regulations proposed - no ICE yet!
Modern Railways 67(741), page 87.

NEWS - ARCHAEOLOGY

Medieval carvings at risk, Rovston Cave,
Hertfordshire

Conservators from Tobit Curteis Associates have spent
over 18 months studying the medieval carved chalk walls
at Royston Cave (a Scheduled Ancient Monument) below
Melbourn Street in Royston. Of supposedly fourteenth-
century date, the cave is thought to be subject to damage
by water leaking from nearby pipes or drains. Why the
deterioration of the carv ings of religious scenes should
have accelerated in recent years is not clear: nor is it
clear how the decay might be arrested or at least slowed.
English Heritage is funding the current work.

It was local historian Sylvia Beamon’s interest and
research into Royston Cave that gave birth to Subterranea
Britannica in 1974; see SB23 June 2010, page 1.
SOURCE: GOODING, Matthew, 2010.

No quick fix to save the cave. Royston Crow 6539 (18
February 2010), page 1 [Royston Cave]

Rock-cut caves to be surveyed in Nottingham
The City of Nottingham has at least 450 to 500 or so
rock-cut ‘caves’ excavated in the red Sherw r ood

Sandstone on which it lies. These are of medieval to
modem date, and have been made or subsequently used
for various purposes including cellarage, makings, a
tannery, air-raid shelters, and so forth. The British
Geological Survey compiled a bulky register of all the
then known man-made caves in the 1980s, complete with
plans. Archaeologists from Trent and Peak Archaeology,
at the University of Nottingham, are now building on that
earlier study, using up-to-date surveying equipment and
techniques. One product of this new work is a “3D fly-
through colour animation” to allow the caves’ layout to
be appreciated. For further information visit
www.nottinghamcavessurvey.org.uk/index.htm .
SOURCE: ANON, 2010, Nottingham's hidden caves.
Current Archaeology 21 (4)(244). page 11.

Human remains in archaeology

Members of Subterranea Britannica have, in the course
of their excursions, visited a number of tenanted burial
vaults, mausolea and catacombs. They may find this
volume both practical (what should you do on discovering
a human corpse or skeleton?), and how long does it take
for the one to turn into the other? These and numerous
other questions, some of which you might have hesitated
to ask, are comprehensively answered in this volume.
There are specific index entries for cave burials,
chambered vaults, charnel houses and ossuaries.
DETAILS: ROBERTS, Charlotte A., 2009, Human
remains in archaeology: a practical handbook. Council
for British Archaeology: Practical Handbooks in
Archaeology 19: xix + 292pp [ISBN 978-1-902771-75-5]
Not built by slaves after all: new light on the
builders of the pyramids, Egypt

Excavation of nine-feet-deep burial shafts at Giza have
revealed the well-preserved skeletons of a dozen persons
thought to have been amongst those who built the
pyramids. These people had been buried, over 4,000 years
ago, with supplies of beer and bread for the afterlife
not to be expected for unpaid and expendable slaves.
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS. 2010, Hard work yes,
slavery no. Graves show pyramid workers were paid.
The Guardian, 12 January 2010, page 18.

NEWS - DEFENCE AND
MILITARY

Switzerland’s WorldWar II Bunkers Get a Second Life

Switzerland may be famous for its banks, but not many
people know about the one that lies hidden underneath
the Alps. The cavernous underground vault, which has
blast- and bullet-proof doors, is strong enough to withstand
terrorist attacks and natural disasters. But when it was
first carved out below a mountain in the Swiss town of
Saanen over half a century ago, the vault was designed
to withstand a different kind of attack - one by the

German army. It used to be a World War II bunker, and,
like thousands of other old bunkers around Switzerland
that had stood empty for decades, it now has a second
life as something else entirely.

Although Switzerland had been neutral for four centuries,
when the Nazis started invading countries to its east and
west in 1939, the tiny nation decided to batten down the
hatches. The Swiss military dug over 20,000 bunkers in
the Alps, allowing its soldiers to stay hidden - along with
their weapons, ammunition, and other supplies - and
defend the country in case of an attack.

The government maintained its tight network of military
fortifications until the end of Cold War. Then, in the 1990s,
it started to sell or rent some of the bunkers to private
companies and other civilian organizations. Now these
underground fortresses are used as everything from
hotels, banquet halls and seminar centers to museums,
stables, and, in at least one case, a storage room for
cheese.

Thanks to its tight security, the Saanen fort, which during
the war served as an Air Force command post, is called
the Swiss Fort Knox. It is co-owned by SIAG, a
technology-security company whose CEO, Christoph
Oschwald, knew of the bunker’s existence from his own
army days. He figured its impregnable cement walls made
it the perfect place to store digital data. “To build a high-
tech data bank with the highest level of security would
cost about $250,000,” says Oschwald, whose company
also runs another digital bank in a former underground
military bunker in the nearby town of Zweisimmen. “So
to use one that was already built made sense.”
Southeast of Saanen, inside the massive St. Gotthard
mountain, there lies another fort, this one used during the
war as an artillery stronghold. In 2004, it was converted
into a hotel called La Claustra. For those not suffering
from claustrophobia, the four-star facility, open from May
to December, offers a spa, a conference center, and the
boasting rights that come with staying in a hotel hewn
deep into the mountain rock. Other demobilized bunkers
have been turned into museums displaying the now-
obsolete weaponry and rudimentary shelter that discreetly
protected thousands of troops for months at a time.
SOURCE: magazine July 2010

4

Campaigners fight to preserve the WW2 RAF
command centre and cold war regional war room
at Kenton Bar, Newcastle

The operations room before restoration. Photo Nick Catford

Campaigners hoping to restore the WW2 13 Group Fighter
Command Headquarters and Region 1 Regional War
Room at Kenton Bar in Newcastle are closer to realising
their dream. It is hoped the building, which has been
abandoned and closed to the public for decades, could
eventually be opened as a museum. The vision, led by
the war history enthusiasts’ Bunker 13 group, has now
received a significant boost after local residents voted
overwhelmingly in support of the idea.

The future of the bunker was called into question when
developers Taylor Wimpey built new flats on the land
two years ago. The property developers helped restore
the bunker, but have not been able to contribute any
further due to complicated planning clauses. Now,
following fears that the site could be left to decay, the
Bunker 13 group is hoping to become a registered charity
to raise the funds and explore the legislation themselves.
People living on the nearby Central Grange housing
development have voted 92% in favour of the bunker
opening as a museum. Michael Younger, a spokesman
for Bunker 13, said: “It’s unique. There is nowhere in
the rest of the British Isles with such well-preserved
wartime history - it’s an amazing place. A lot of hard
work has already gone into preserving the bunker, and it
would be a crime if it was simply forgotten.”

Anyone who wants to find out more or get involved in
the campaign should visit www.bunker13.co.uk.
SOURCE: Newcastle Evening Chronicle June 2010
Dig to find Dambusters secret bunker

Archaeologists have begun an investigation at the home
of the Dambusters in a bid to find a secret hidden bunker.
St Vincent’s, off Harrowby Road in Grantham, will
forever be assured a place in British history as the

headquarters for No. 5 Bomber Group during the Second
World War and the birthplace of the Dambusters. Now,
more than 70 years later, St Vincent’s will welcome
investigators from Grantham Archaeology Group to find
out what secrets the site still holds.

David Hibbitt, of Grantham Archaeology Group, said:
“Many additional buildings were constructed in the
grounds including a large briefing room attached to the
house and several other unidentified buildings in the
grounds. Perhaps the most enigmatic reference talks of
an underground bunker close to the house.” The
archaeological group was invited in by the owner of St
Vincent’s, Graham Jeal, who hopes the bunker can be
located.

The group is keen to hear from anyone who worked at
St Vincent's during the war or has any old photographs.
Tel: 0797 6981027 ore-mail:
granthamarchaeologygroup at yahoo.co.uk
SOURCE: Grantham Journal June 2010
Cannabis farm found inWatnallWW II bunker

A cannabis farm has been found in a World War II Fighter
Command’s 12 Group filter room at Watnall near
Nottingham - with police saying it is the biggest they
have discovered in years. Eight officers cut their way
through the steel doors in the early hours of yesterday
the morning after a tip-off from a member of the public
and discovered plants in two large rooms. Scenes of crime
officers were called out and the lights and equipment
used to grow the drugs were taken apart and demolished.
SOURCE: Eastwood & Kimberley Advertiser
May 2010

Proposal to save Bentley Priory bunker

A residents’ group is hoping to save a historic Cold War
bunker at a former RAF base from demolition. The RAF
Bentley Priory Battle of Britain Trust says it does not
have enough money to maintain the site and the residents’
association is trying to find another group willing to take
on responsibility for the site.

A planning application for permission to demolish the
bunker has been submitted by VSM Estates and is due

Photo Nick Catford

to be considered on September 15. John Williams, the
Stanmore Society’s chairman, wrote to Harrow Council's
planning committee in March objecting “in the strongest
possible terms”. He said: “We can see no point in spending
thousands of pounds destroying something which in the
1980s cost millions of pounds to build. This is a unique
building in Harrow and should be preserved intact.”

As the home of Fighter Command during World War
Two, Bentley Priory holds a special place in the hearts
of veterans and military enthusiasts across the country.
But the original Second World War bunker was lost when
the current Cold War bunker was built and the newer
structure has not been given listed status. VSM Estates
is currently in negotiations to sell Bentley Priory to a
developer for housing and if the project goes ahead a
commemorative museum to the Battle of Britain will be
set up in the most historic rooms.

SOURCE: This is Local London (website) August 2010

WVV2 shelter discovered on Sutton Green (Surrey)

Council workers cleaning up at Sutton Green have
discovered an old WW2 air-raid shelter. The workers
noticed a five-metre hole in the ground and it is thought
to be the roof of a buried air-raid shelter which has
collapsed. The only council records mentioning the public
bomb shelter are that three large shelters capable of
housing 450 people were constructed in the area in 1939/
1940.

Sutton Council has launched an appeal for information
from any residents who may remember when the shelters
were open.

SOURCE: BBC London website July 2010

No 20 Group Royal Observer Corps Protected
Headquarters, York, 1961 -91

English Heritage has published a detailed account of this
structure, which SB members attending the Yorkshire
Study Weekend visited a few years ago. The paper gives
a detailed history and mode of operation of the ROC and
its predecessor organisations, and of the building itself,
which is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument, and open
to the public at certain times.

The control room before restoration. Photo Nick Catford

The bunker is described as ‘revetted with grass banks
and hidden from view in a hollow a few hundred yards
from the busy B1224 Acomb Road’ to the east of York.
Any public library in the UK should be able to obtain a
photocopy for personal information and research at a
nominal cost, subject to the completion of a copyright
declaration.

DETAILS: THOMAS, Roger J.C., 2008, No. 20 Group
Royal Observer Corps Protected Headquarters, York,
1961 -91. English Heritage Historical Review 3,
137- 147.

The Rhydymwyn chemical weapons factory site.
North Wales

A short account of the secret ‘Valley Works’ site at
Rhydymwyn has been published. This site had important
roles to play in connection with the development of the
atomic bomb, and the manufacture of chemical weapons.
There are both surface buildings and excavated tunnels
-all now empty.

The site lies alongside the river Alyn, on the A541 road,
northwest of Mold. Access is controlled by the
Rhydymwyn Valley Nature Reserve Visitor Centre by
prior arrangement: contact the Centre at 01352 741591 /
Email: help@rvsweb.org.uk or see www.rvsweb.org.uk
DETAILS: BERRY, Jon, 2009,The secret site. Heritage
in Wales 42, 18-21.

Subterranean Taliban mountain hideaway,
Baj a ur, Pakistan

Some years ago, when the armed conflict in Afghanistan
was young, the less reliable British newspapers carried
fantastic diagrams purporting to show details of high-
tech extensive tunnelled Taliban bunker systems, giving
the impression that there were Cold War-style sites with
air conditioning, electronic gadgetry, and the like. These
bunkers, like Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass

destruction, were (it is hardly surprising to discover) all
figments of the imagination!

A real Taliban Tair’ tunnelled into a mountainside in
Pakistan has now been featured in a photograph and
description in The Independent. What the photograph
shows is an unlined rock-cut tunnel, devoid of fixtures,
fittings, or even furniture.

SOURCE: COCKBURN. Patrick, 2010, The secret war
- and the hidden lair of the Taliban. The Independent ,
16 April 2010, page 31.

NEWS- TUNNELS

Hackney Mole Man dies

A pensioner dubbed the ‘Mole Man’ because of his
habitual tunnelling has died - leaving a £350,000 unpaid
council bill. William Lyttle was ordered to pay the sum
after Hackney council evicted him when he almost caused
his 20-room detached home to collapse by digging a
network of passages underneath it.

The retired civil engineer had spent forty years digging
60 feet of tunnels before a nearby pavement collapsed,
sparking the council investigation. After being evicted
from his home in Mortimer Road he was eventually
rehoused in a nearby flat. But it was revealed that the
council faces an even higher bill - because the Mole
Man had started digging again at his top-floor flat where
he was found dead from natural causes in June.
Sources said Mr Lyttle had “gone back to his old
behaviour” and knocked a tunnel-shaped hole in the
dividing wall between his living room and kitchen on the
De Beauvoir estate. After council chiefs first uncovered
Mr Lyttle’s tunnelling activities in 2006 they found
skiploads of junk - including the wrecks of four Renault
4 cars, a boat, scrap metal, old baths, fridges and dozens

of TV sets. The authority filled in the tunnels with
concrete in an attempt to stop the property collapsing. It
would be worth more than £1 million if renovated.
SOURCE: Evening Standard June 2010

Flushing human remains into sewers idea
dismissed by Cumbrian funeral directors

An “eco-friendly” plan that would allow human remains
to be dissolved and flushed into the sewerage system
has been dismissed by Cumbrian undertakers.

Belgian undertakers have come up with proposals which
could see people’s dead loved ones put into containers
filled with salts and water. Under the process, the
containers would then be pressurised and some time later
the remaining liquid and mineral ash would be flushed
into sewage systems or be put into urns for loved ones.
The proposal has not been well received in Cumbria
where the idea of dissolving dead bodies and then flushing
them away was dismissed as “disrespectful” by local
undertakers. Bruce Harris, who runs George Hudson &
Sons Funeral Directors, said: “It’s definitely not a good
idea because you'd end up putting unwanted minerals
back into the earth. With burials and cremations, you are
at least left with a memorial to the person who has died.
And you get it within a reasonable amount of time -
rather than having to wait six months for a body to
dissolve.”

A spokesman for the European Commission in the UK
said: “Whatever Belgian undertakers decide regarding
funeral arrangements is a matter for the Belgian
authorities-just like it’s a matter for the UK authorities
in this country.”

SOURCE :News & Star July 2010

Fat cleared from London sewers would till nine
double-decker buses

A team of “flushers” equipped with full breathing
apparatus has been drafted in with shovels to dig out an
estimated 1,000 tonnes of putrid fat from an area under
Leicester Square. They use powerful jets to break it
down. The build-up of fat and grease underground is the
result of years of ‘sewer abuse’ - when anything other
than water, human waste and toilet paper is put down
drains - according to Thames Water.

Danny Brackley, the water company’s sewer flusher, said:
“We’re used to getting our hands dirty, but nothing on
this scale. We couldn’t even access the sewer as it was
blocked by a four-foot wall of solid fat.” The clean-up is
expected to last for around two weeks.

SOURCE: Telegraph website July 2010
Wallington Hall (Northumberland) cellars open
to the public

Centuries-old cellars beneath a Northumberland stately
home are being opened up to give visitors a unique flavour
of life in the times of the feared Border Reivers.

The labyrinth of underground rooms below Wallington
Hall was originally part of a heavily-fortified pele tower,
which stood on the site 700 years ago when the local
Fenwick family was part of the Reiver clans. The ground
floor of the tower - where the Fenwicks held court and
up to 500 heavily armoured horsemen would muster
before galloping out on their Border raids - is now buried
under the country house which was built in 1688. Used
as cellars by generations of Wallington’s owners, the thick
stone walls, vaulted ceilings, stone-flagged floors and
narrow windows, passageways and doorways have been
perfectly preserved.

In July 2010 — as part of this year’s Festival of British
Archaeology - they were opened up for one day only so
that people can literally step back in time to the days
when replenishing the larder meant rustling a few hundred
sheep or cattle. For many years the labyrinth of cellars
was used for storing wine and beer, until the nineteenth
century when the Trevelyan family joined the
Temperance movement and all alcohol was donated to
Cambridge University for ‘scientific purposes’.
SOURCE: Journal Live website July 2010
Gravel recovery tunnels in the Trent Valley pits

A new class of tunnel, hitherto unknown to your reviewer,
has been noted in gravel pits in the Trent valley. A ‘gravel
recovery tunnel’ is (or perhaps was, as I suspect these
tunnels had a somewhat ephemeral existence) apparently
an internal cut-and-cover tunnel constructed to allow raw
or processed gravel to be moved about by conveyor belt
within a gravel pit and its associated crushing, screening
or washing plant. Examples are cited at Hoveringham

(Nottinghamshire) and Barton-under-Needwood near
Burton-upon-Trent (Staffordshire).

SOURCE: COOPER, Timothy M.. 2008, Laying the
foundations: a history and archaeology of the Trent Valley sand
and gravel industry. Council for British Archaeology Research
Report 159: xvi + 160pp [ISBN 978-1 -902771-76-2]

Old Blackb all road tunnel to close for refurbishment
and safety' upgrade five weekends in 2010, London

The original Blackwall Tunnel under the Thames was
opened to two-way road traffic (at the time almost
exclusively horse-drawn) in 1897. The new Blackwall
Tunnel, running approximately parallel, was opened in
1967, from which date the old tunnel has served
northbound traffic and the new one southbound.

In 2003, following several disastrous fires in European
road tunnels, the ‘old’ Blackwall was listed as one of the
most dangerous. Refurbishment and a safety upgrade
this year necessitate closure to southbound traffic on five
weekends in 2010. Northbound traffic is to be diverted
to the ‘new’ tunnel, and southbound traffic redirected
via the Rotherhithe Tunnel.

SOURCE: ANON, Blackwall Tunnel upgrade.
Metro, 3 June 2010, page 67.

Tunnelling starts on Crossrail, London

Tunnelling has started at the Royal Oak portal on
London’s Crossrail, and at subsurface stations planned
at Canary Wharf, Farringdon and Tottenham Court Road.
Crossrail, like the RER system in Paris, will accommodate
full-size main line trains, and will have a service of regional
trains between Maidenhead and Heathrow Airport to the
west of London, and Abbey Wood and Shenfield to the
east. Trains every few minutes will serve new subsurface
stations in central London. Services may later be
extended, on surface lines, to Reading and Gravesend.
Tunnelled sections will be on the spur line into London
Heathrow Airport; from Paddington to Stratford; and
from Whitechapel to Custom House, and Custom House
under the Thames to Woolwich. The western part of the
central London tunnelling will be through London Clay
(an excellent tunnelling medium), much of the eastern
part through the more difficult Lower London Tertiary
Beds, and the new under-Thames tunnel through Upper
Chalk. In all there will be almost 21 kilometres of new
twin-bore tunnelling.

As with the Channel Tunnel, the project has had a long
gestation period. An east-west rail tunnel under central
London was first suggested in the Greater London
Council’s ‘Movement in London’ study in 1969, and the
name ‘Crossrail’ was first used in the ‘London Rail Study’
in 1974. Routes for tunnelling have been safeguarded,
by banning the development of tall buildings with deep
foundations at key points. Routes for possible (surface)
extensions to Reading and Gravesend are similarly
protected.

8

In a sense, London can be said to be catching up with
both Paris (RER) and Brussels, there having been a main
line tunnel taking inter-city as well as local trains between
the former North and South termini since 1952, when
they were linked by multiple track tunnelling and a new
subsurface Central Station.

SOURCE: BERRYMAN, Keith, 2010, Digging begins on
Crossrail. Modem Railways 67(740), 43 - 44. 46 and 48.

Enlargement of Victoria Underground Station,
London

The London Underground station at Victoria has two
booking halls, both inadequate in size for current traffic
levels, linked by a corridor. One serves the Victoria Line,
whilst the older one is on the District and Circle Lines.
This station, jointly with King’s Cross, is the second busiest
(after Oxford Circus) on the London Underground. King’s
Cross has recently been enlarged, with a new northern
ticket hall. Work is now about to start on doubling the
size of the Victoria Line ticket hall at Victoria, adding a
new northern ticket hall under Bressenden Place, installing
nine new escalators, and adding and widening access
points.

Before actual tunnelling can begin in 2011, much
preparatory work has to be done. Firstly, existing electric
cables, gas and water pipes, and drains and sewers have
to be taken into account and, in places, diverted. Secondly,
all the voids in this shallow subsurface complex have to
be created in loose watery gravel: this has to be dewatered
and consolidated with grout before it can be tunnelled
without causing surface subsidence. Completion is
expected in 2018.

ABBOTT, James, 2010, Easing the crush at Victoria.
Modem Railways 67(740), 43 - 44, 46 and 48.

Postponed reopening of another canal tunnel link
into the limestone mines at Dudley, West Midlands

The Dudley canal tunnel (a main tunnel of 2,904 yards
together with two shorter tunnels) on the Birmingham
Canal Navigation opened to traffic in 1792, and connected
with a claimed mile and a half of internal tunnels inside
the Dudley limestone mines. It went out of use in 1950,
and was boarded up in 1962.

Thanks to the presence nearby of the Black Country
Museum, and especially to the work of the Dudley Canal
Trust, the tunnel was reopened to traffic in 1973. The
Trust operates public barge trips through the tunnel, and
also along a side tunnel into one of the impressive mine
caverns where visitors witness a son et lumiere
presentation.

Plans to reopen another internal canal branch tunnel into
the Step Shaft mine have been put on hold, as part of the
rock at the internal tunnel entrance is crumbling.
SOURCE: CLARKE, Bob, Tunnel plans put on hold.
Waterways World. June 2010, page 51.

Car driven through the Channel Tunnel

John Surtees, a former racing driver, drove an electric
car through the Channel Tunnel on 17 November 2009,
commemorating the 15th anniversary of its opening. This
was of course through the service tunnel which, most of
the way, lies between the two running tunnels.

The service tunnel is diverted, laterally and elevationally,
in the areas of the crossover caverns, where trains in
either direction can change from from north to south
running tunnels, or vice versa, as required (so passenger
Eurostars, with shorter transit times, can overtake the
slower car shuttles below the sea).

Sounds like a good idea for a Sub Brit trip and walkabout!
SOURCE: ANON, Going underground. The Guardian ,

18 November 2009, page 9.

Newly constructed railway tunnel near Liskeard,
Cornwall

The main line from Paddington to Penzance now travels
through a short newly constructed double-track tunnel to
the west of Liskeard. This has been made below the
new Dobwalls highway bypass, and named after a fonner
railway signalling engineer, Frank Sperritt.

SOURCE: [SPERRITT. Frank], 2010, Signalling guru Frank
Sperritt honoured. Modem Railways 67(740), page 82.
Failed attempt to rob banks by tunnelling,
Cheshire and Paris

A gang of would-be thieves has failed to enter the
strongroom of a Paris bank, despite using a pneumatic
drill, and starting from a nearby Metro station.
Neighbouring cellars and the sewers system evidently
also formed part of the route planning.

Last year would-be robbers attempted to tunnel into a
branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland at Poynton,
Cheshire. The evidently not very bright tunnellers came
up in an empty office block next-door to the bank, by
mistake.

SOURCES: W1LLSHER, Kim, 2010, ‘Termite gang’ dig into
French bank but raid is foiled. The Guardian, 5 April 2010,
page 17, and ANON, 2009, Bungling bank robbers tunnel into
wrong building. The Observer , 8 March 2009, page 5.

A successful robbery by tunnelling, Sao Paulo,
Brazil

A gang of thieves in Sao Paulo spent months planning
and excavating a tunnel into a security van company,
timing their breakthrough to coincide with the final day
of a Brazilian football championship, when a great many
people were expected to be looking only at their television
sets.

The 150m tunnel was driven, undetected, below
neighbouring properties and is thought to have taken at
least four months to dig. It was dug from a 'nondescript
two-storev home’ across a small square from the

headquarters of Transnacionale Transporte de Valores e
Seguranca. Six suspects have been arrested, but only
$2,400 recovered.

The tunnel was a metre square, and fitted with electric
lighting. It led directly to the security van company’s safe,
and is thought to have been driven with the aid of GPS
technology. A second tunnel from the same house is
thought to have been made as an emergency escape route,
for use in case of the gang’s activities being detected.
SOURCE: PHILLIPS, Tom, 2009, The Brazilian job -
audacious tunnel team dig 150m to get away with $6m.
The Guardian , 9 December 2009, page 22.

Smuggling tunnels in Gaza

Tunnels under the border from Gaza into Egypt remain
in the news. Goods brought in include motorcycles and
livestock. Israel prevents importation of goods through
its own borders with Gaza, and attempts to destroy the
tunnels to Egypt by bombing. Egyptian authorities, in turn,
are said to be installing a subsurface wall going down at
least 30 metres.

Smugglers’ tunnels (supposedly hundred or thousands of
them) are entered via ‘wells’ over 10 metres deep.
Motorcycles, imported in parts, reassembled, and sold to
Palestinian youths are associated with steeply increased
road casualty rates. Electrical good, smuggled in, can be
used only when the unpredictable power supply is
available.

SOURCE: SHERWOOD, Harriet, 2009, Special report:
smuggling in Gaza.

The Tube map: north and south of the river Thames,
London

The latest (May 2010) edition of London Underground’s
‘Tube map’ now features a noteworthy extension
southwards, with the extension of former East London
Line services via New Cross Gate to termini at Crystal
Palace and West Croydon (and the river Thames has
been reinstated!).

The ‘new’ line is of course no such thing, simply
substantial lengths of pre-existing line (including that
through the Brunels’Thames Tunnel) with a few modern
additions such as a flyover at New Cross Gate to allow
the new ‘London Overground’ services to cross from
the east side to the west side of the London to Croydon
and south coast lines. London Overground trains, every
15 minutes, run to Dalston Junction, and are operated by
or for Transport for London. The journey from Croydon
to Dalston takes something like 45 to 50 minutes.

The Crystal Palace ‘terminus’ (buffer stops have been
inserted on former through lines) is well worth a visit.
The north side of the station building is by far the most
impressive surviving structure from the Crystal Palace
development at Sydenham, where the Great Exhibition
building of 1851 was (with enlargements) re-erected in

1854. The ‘palace’ itself was destroyed by fire on 30
November 1936. And, as a bonus, you have a splendid
view of the eastern portal of the Crystal Palace tunnel
from the station platforms.

Another reason for using this line is, of course, the trip
through the Brunels’Thames Tunnel, and the opportunity
to view the subsurface stations at Rotherhithe and
Wapping. And don’t forget to visit the Brunei Museum
at the former location (in the Brunels’ pumping-engine
house, between the rear of the station and the river).

NEWS - MINES AND MINING

Minuartia mine, Mendip Hills, Somerset

A 20m-deep mine-shaft on the Mendip Hills has been
investigated by cavers hoping for connections to a natural
cave system. The mine, rediscovered in July 2009, is
capped, and on the Yoxter rifle range near Priddy.

All that was found, reportedly, at the bottom of the shaft
was a short length of mined passage (supposedly of 19th-
century date) with traces of shot-holes. One end opens
out into a cavity in a calcite vein. No natural cave passage
is reported. The name of the mine evidently derives from
the scientific name for the plant sandwort.

SOURCE: LUMLEY, Mark, 2010, Minuartia mine.
Newsletter: Chelsea Spelaeological Society 52(3), 46-47.

Mine-shaft man-traps, Northumberland

A sixty-year-old farmer, Michael Brown, was saved from
plummeting into a five-metre-deep hole in his land at
Halton-le-Gate, Northumberland. The ground gave way
under him, but he was able to save himself by grabbing
one of several old rail lines which had been laid across it
but been hidden under soil and grass.

The hole is assumed to have been an abandoned mine-
shaft. The rails may represent an earlier but inadequate
attempt to make the hole safe. Earthed-over old timber
doors, sheets of corrugated iron, and uprooted hawthorn
bushes have been amongst other favourite way of
‘sealing’ mine shafts and crown hole collapses - all of
which methods are all too likely to be found wanting in
time, and result in serious risks to life and property.
SOURCE: Erwin, Miles, 2009, Farmer falls down hole
but is saved by rail lines. Metro , 10 December 2009,
page 39.

Limestone mines at Cousland under threat,
near Dalkeith, Scotland

Several extensive limestone mines were once worked in
and around Cousland, near Dalkeith. Access to many of
these is currently blocked, and others have been open-
casted out of existence. Scottish Coal has now proposed
a 150-hectare opencast mine at Airfield Farm, potentially
destroying further underground workings.

SOURCE: ANON, 2009, Mining at Cousland. Bulletin.
Grampian Speleological Group, 4th Series, 4(2), page 17.

NEWS - MISCELLANEOUS

Golf underground in Soho, London

A 6,000-square-foot basement in a former printing works
in Soho has been equipped with six ‘golf simulators’.
Playing on a selected simulated course consists of
standing in a booth, 11 feet by 12 feet, and whacking a
golf ball through a screen and past an array of sensors
which detect the trajectory and landing point of the ball
would have followed if it had not by then fallen to the
floor! You can select, on the screen, any one of fifty
famous courses worldwide, and see where your ball would
have gone if it had been played for real! As sad electronic
toys go, this one takes some beating!

A (w)hole new meaning to underground bunkers!
SOURCE: BROUGHTON. Christian, 2004, Golf goes
underground. The Independent Review, 27 September
2004, page 7.

Mysterious holes in the ground in and around
Brentford and Twickenham, Greater London

The periodical publication of the Hounslow and District
History Society, in its Autumn 2009 issue, described two
brick-lined circular-section structures, with speculations
as to their purposes.

The first was found during building work at a cottage
garden in St. Margaret’s Grove, ‘near the Turk’s Head
public house in Winchester Road’. It was reportedly a
brick-built cylindrical structure about seven feet deep,
four feet in diameter, with a ‘natural earth’ floor,
surmounted by a brick dome which had had a small
aperture in the top, subsequently filled with inserted
brickwork.

It is implied that the subsoil here is gravel. Unfortunately,
it is not stated if the brickwork of the dome was or was
not identical with that of the main structure: it might have
been a later addition to guard against people falling into
the thing! The immediate area appears from maps of
1818, 1865 and later to have supported a brickfield,
orchards and then cottages.

The second reported structure was discovered in the
garden of a Victorian terraced house at Upper Butts,
Brentford. This seems to have been similar, but perhaps
without a dome. The area was formerly one of orchards
and market gardens.

Several interpretations for both structures have been
suggested, including wells, cisterns, soakaways, cool-
stores for fruit or vegetables, or ice-houses. Both the
reported structures are almost certainly located on the
flood plain gravels of the river Thames, and very close
(100 yards or so) to the small tributary rivers, the Brent
and the Crane. Gravels here could be expected to be full
of water, from time to time, at shallow depth. Shallow
draw-wells, or water-storage cisterns (which would hold
water for so long as the surrounding gravel was
waterlogged) seem likely.

SOURCE: CAMERON, Andrea. 2009. Mysterious
underground structures in St. Margaret's and Brentford.
The Honeslaw Chronicle 39 (Autumn 2009), 19 - 21
[With additional observations by Paul W. Sowan]

Underground ‘eco-house’ proposed for Bolton,
Lancashire

An application has been made to Bolton Council, by a
Manchester United footballer (Gary Neville), for planning
permission for an £8m underground house. The 8,000-
square-foot house would include, if built, a gymnasium, a
swimming pool, four bedrooms, and a wind-turbine to
render the dwelling self-sufficient for electricity.
SOURCE: ANON, 2010, Red goes green. Daily
Telegraph, 27 January 2010.

The world’s deepest hole?

The Guardian's ‘Notes & queries' column recently
featured a question about the world’s deepest hole.

One Mike Follows, of Willenhall, suggested that the
deepest hole on earth is the "Kola Superdeep Borehole’
drilled on the Kola peninsula (Russia) to a depth of 12,261
metres between 1970 and 1989. This bore was simply to
examine the earth’s crust below some of the world’s
oldest pre-Cambrian rocks, its depth representing a mere
0.2% of the depth to the centre of the planet.

NEWS - PUBLICATIONS - BOOKS

Fuller’s earth mining near Bath, Somerset

DETAILS: MACMILLEN, Neil, and Mike CHAPMAN,
2009, A history of the fuller’s earth mining industry around
Bath. Witney: Black Dwarf Lightmoor Publications Ltd:

152pp [ISBN 978-1 -899889-32-7] [Somerset / Nutfield
(Surrey)] [£17.50 inclusive of postage and packing from
Black Dwarf Lightmoor Publications Ltd, 120 Farmers
Close, Witney, Oxford 0X28 1NR]

Fuller’s earth, an unusual (highly absorbent) clay,
mineralogically montmorillonite, has been worked
opencast on a large scale at Nutfield and Redhill (east
Surrey), and also mined on and off in the same area. It
has only been found in economically workable deposits
at a few other places, including the Maidstone district
(Kent), and an area in Somerset south of Bath.

Its many uses derive from its very high absorbency, the
material having a very large free surface area (about 80
square metres per gram of earth). Thus it is good for
absorbing grease from wool, and indeed as is well-known
in and around Nutfield, the natural excretory products of
cats!

A history of the Nutfield / Redhill mines, pits, and works
is not, as far as I am aware, currently available. But a
perfectly splendid book about the mining and processing
in Somerset has recently been published.

The book contains a location map (several mines and
processing works were operated in and around Midford),
site plans and underground plans of mines, descriptions

11

and explanations of the properties of the clay and of its
processing and uses, and is well illustrated with
photographs inside the mines, at the entrances, in the
works, etc. A whole chapter is devoted to associated
road, canal, and railway transport.

Peak District Mines Historical Society’s
50th anniversary

The Peak District Mines Historical Society celebrated
its 50th anniversary in 2009, having been established at
an inaugural meeting on 25 April 1959. A substantial
commemorative book has been published which reviews
the Society’s development and achievements during its
first half century. Numerous photographs, and supporting
text, illustrate field excursions, archaeological work, mine
exploration and so forth. Some items of note include the
reopening of the Magpie Sough, the restoration as a field
study centre of the surface buildings at Magpie Mine,
the establishment of the Peak District Mining Museum
and publicly visitable Temple Mine at Matlock Bath, and
much else.

PEAK DISTRICT MINES HISTORICAL SOCIETY,
2010, 50 golden years-the first half century of the Peak
District Mines Historical Society. Peak District Mines
Historical Society: 106pp.

Rovston Cave - Used bv Saints or
Sinners?

Sylvia Beamon, M.A., Temple Publications, 2009.
£16.99 ISBN 978-0955740008; pp314.

Book review by M C Black

In 1974 historian Sylvia Beamon was the principal
founding member of Sub Brit as a direct result of her
interest in ice-houses and Royston Cave. Her book on
this latter subject was first published in hardback in 1992
and is now republished in a softback updated version.
The first part of the book describes the location of
Royston at the intersection of Icknield Way and Ermine
Street, and the accidental discovery of the Cave in 1742.
Various excavations were made in the Georgian and
Victorian periods and a ‘commodious entrance passage’
dug by Thomas Watson from his house allowing visitors
to see the Cave and view the amazing and intriguing
carvings without using a vertical ladder.

The Cave is compared with similar structures in Israel
and elsewhere which may have been used by the Knights
Templar, an order of mediaeval soldier-monks established
to protect pilgrims. The Order became wealthy
throughout Europe as a result of royal support and
enjoyed exemption from taxation and freedom from tolls
and passage dues. The rivalry between the Knights
Templar and Hospitaller is mentioned and the importance
of grain in the Templar economy is discussed with especial
reference to the great barns at Cressing Temple in Essex.
The recorded history of Royston mentions a monastery,
two leper hospitals and a “hermitage” - which may have
been Royston Cave - and the book contrasts the work
of various writers on the subject. Each of the cave’s
carvings is described in great detail, explaining and
“translating” the symbolism and comparing them with
similar carvings and images found elsewhere and with
symbolism in Freemasonry.

What are the Cave’s origins? The similarities,
coincidences and possible links between the Cave and
other sites, modem and historic, local and further afield,
are addressed. All the possible alternative uses (many
put forward by members of Subterranea Britannica) are
considered but the evidence suggests that it was an
Oratory used by the Knights Templar.

Comprehensive appendices cover geology, the painted
figures, the Knights Templar and other crusading orders,
legends of saints and martyrs, English and French kings,
excavation reports, transcriptions of mediaeval charters
and other source documents.

Today, the Cave is the responsibility of English Heritage
and is Scheduled Grade I. It is administered by Royston
Town Council and open to visitors during the summer
months. Visiting the Cave sooner rather than later is
recommended as water ingress, acid rain and vibration
caused by heavy traffic are causing the carvings to
deteriorate.

Royston Cave - Used by Saints or Sinners? is the
result of many years’ painstaking investigation by a
meticulous and thorough researcher and this latest edition
is recommended to Sub Brit members everywhere. See
Subterranea 23 (June 2010), page 1, fora picture of the
Cave, Sylvia and Sub Brit members.

Sunny Hill Park and the Borough of Hendon at War -
Sub Brit helps to record some long-lost air-raid shelters
Dr Gabriel Moshenska and Stewart Wild

Compared to some councils in the 1930s, the London
Borough of Hendon arrived rather belatedly at the
realisation that air-raid shelters would be required for
the population in the event of war. While some councils
took the bombing of Barcelona in 1936 or the Munich
Crisis of 1938 as an urgent impetus to provide air-raid
protection, shelter construction in public spaces in
Hendon appears not to have begun until mid-1939.

In April of that year the Council voted to reject a
resolution, proposed by Southall Borough Council, to push
for the construction of deep, bomb-proof underground
shelters. These had proved their worth in the Spanish
Civil War, and a number of reputable engineers and
scientists such as Ove Arup and J.B.S. Haldane were
pushing for a British equivalent, particularly in dense urban
areas. Elsewhere in London the pursuit of this enhanced
protection in the interest of their residents, and in defiance
of central government, led to legal actions against the
Borough of Finsbury and some of its officers.
Construction begins

However by 1939 the threat of war appeared more
urgent, and by the end of May that year shelters were
under construction in eight parks in the borough, and the

The excavated main entrance to Shelter 1;
this has now been backfilled

Home Office had promised funding of £24,207 for
shelters to accommodate c. 12,000 people. It was planned
that these would be built of corrugated steel with concrete
walls, stretched around the edges of local parks, and
covered with a layer of earth for enhanced blast
protection.

By mid-June of 1939 the shelters at Sunny Hill Park had
not yet been begun, and elsewhere shortages of materials
were holding up the construction process. In August of
the same year the council put the construction of shelters
in public spaces out to tender, and accepted the bid of
Rigg & Remington Ltd to build shelters of a capacity to
seat around 12,000 people at a cost of £37,500.

The Council was obliged to provide shelters for ten
percent of the resident population of the borough:
approximately 17,000 people. The initial plan laid out in
early September 1939, shortly after the outbreak of war,
was for this to be divided up: 3,400 people would use the
Council-built shelters from the first stage of construction,
while another 1,500 would use empty shops in the borough
that had been converted into reinforced shelters. The
remaining 12,000 would be accommodated in the shelters
to be built by Rigg & Remington Ltd.

Shortly afterwards, as the urgent construction of shelters
around the country put a strain on concrete and steel
resources, these figures were revised: shop shelters would
now house 5,000 people while another 2,950 would use
the small number that Rigg & Remington had produced
up to that point. It was decided that another 5,650 would
be housed in surface shelters that would be built out of
bricks and mortar - a more plentiful resource at the time.
The fluctuating availability of metal frameworks from
Steel Ceilings Ltd caused these plans to be revised
repeatedly over the follow ing few months.

In October 1939 heavy rainfall caused flooding in some
shelters in the Borough, and the sloppy cleaning and
maintenance of shelters by park staff became an issue
of concern. Park keepers reported that on their early
rounds at 7am there w ; ere still too many people sleeping
in the shelters, so that cleaning had to wait until later in
their working day, by which time many were reoccupied.
Sunny Hill Park in wartime

Construction of shelters continued through this period;
shortly after the war began land next to St Mary’s CE
School on Church Terrace was requisitioned for the
construction of a school air-raid shelter. By mid-March
1940 the Council recorded that all planned trench shelters
in the Borough had been completed. The shelters in Sunny
Hill Park can thus be dated with reasonable certainty to
the period mid-June 1939 to mid-March 1940.

The construction of shelters was only one of the impacts
of the Second World War on Sunny Hill Park: in October

13

Emergency escape shaft at the end of Shelter 1

1940 the railings around the children’s playground were
removed for recycling to aid the war effort.

Many parks were turned over to agricultural uses: in the
spring of 1941 land in Sunny Hill Park was allocated to
form 31 allotments, while in November 1942 a standpipe
was installed near the allotments at the request of
residents. Several parks in Hendon were used for grazing
animals, and in 1941 Mr Hinge of Church Farm applied
for grazing permission on Sunny Hill Park. His application
was refused, but a compromise was reached in which
for an annual fee of £ 15 he could cut and remove grass
from the park for animal feed. This arrangement was
renewed annually through to at least 1947.

In the summer of 1941 the 10 ,h
Company of the Home Guard laid a
telephone cable along the eastern
side of Sunny Hill Park, linking their
depot on Great North Way with their
headquarters, the location of which
is unclear. By this time the war had
transformed Sunny Hill Park from
its pre-war role as a venue for public
meetings, theatre, music and play into
a part of the Home Front: stripped
of its iron and hay, and dug up for
planting and for air-raid shelters. Our
question was: what traces remain of
these wartime uses?

The July 2010 Dig
Thus it was that in 2009, following a
successful summer dig in the
grounds of Church Farmhouse
Museum, Hendon and District
Archaeological Society (HADAS)
in conjunction with University
College London’s Department of
Archaeology decided to ask
permission from Barnet Council to Slowly chipping away

carry out an investigative dig on some strange surface
structures (including what looked like the top of a filled-
in concrete staircase) almost completely covered by
nettles, brambles and ivy in nearby Sunny Hill Park.
Your correspondent Gabriel Moshenska is a Research
Fellow at UCL, with a particular interest in World War
II archaeology, and Stewart Wild is a member of both
HADAS and Sub Brit, so we agreed to remain in touch
and to offer Sub Brit's resources and expertise as
required. Barnet Council’s Parks Department granted
permission for the dig and cleared away a massive amount
of undergrowth, the local residents’ association was
enthusiastic, and it was agreed that digging would start
on 12 July 2010 for a maximum of two weeks, under the
direction of Dr Moshenska.

It was soon realised that we were dealing with probably
five parallel rectangular sunken structures, each with a
stairway at one end and overgrown square concrete-
capped brickwork at the other, the latter presumably some
sort of alternative exit shaft to each shelter.

Digging commenced at the first staircase that was
partially visible and necessitated the removal of a large
quantity of rubble and earth, along with bits of rusty
corrugated iron. It took four days' hard work to reach
the bottom of the stairs, at a depth of around three metres,
and to clear a way around the brick blast wall, which
was in remarkably good condition.

Entering the shelter itself. Dr Moshenska was delighted
to find that it was more or less empty of rubble, only
slightly damp, and contained a few rusty artefacts -
buckets, scrap metal, electric cable and suchlike - and a
small amount of graffiti.

at the concrete cap over the emergency escape hatch of Shelter 3

Shelter 3 was the better preserved of the two;
note the electrical lighting cables at the far end

At the far end a decaying vertical metal ladder looked
up to the sealed surface hatch that had served as an
emergency exit alongside a brick wall whose purpose
was to screen off a compartment for a chemical toilet.
There was no evidence of chairs or benches, and
seemingly no holes in the walls to which benches might
have been fixed. There was, however, a row of widely
spaced holes centrally along the roof of the shelter -
perhaps to secure a central dividing screen.

Second shelter entered through Emergency Exit
With limited time available it would only be possible to
enter two of the five shelters and a decision was taken
to try to smash the heavy concrete cap off the exit hatch
of shelter number three. After a lot of hard work by
students and members of HADAS this was achieved on
Sunday July 18.

Sub Brit’s Nick Catford made two visits to the site around
this time, and his excellent photos accompany this article.
Shelter number three was,
unsurprisingly, very similar to
number one. It contained
some post-war debris - beer
bottles and rusty cans for
example - which were
believed to have been left by
persons unknown who had
broken in perhaps in the
1960s, before the Council had
finally covered the hatch with
a thick layer of heavy
concrete, like an enormous
mushroom.

The dimensions of the two shelters were
almost the same: 18.23 m long (net
interior of 14.40 m excluding the
staircase), 2.14m wide and 2.00 m high.
On the wall of each shelter could be
discerned the remains of a wartime
poster - perhaps listing the rules of the
shelter and public health matters. It may
be possible to identify the original wording
from archival sources.

On Thursday 23 July the staircase of
shelter one was backfilled and the
concrete cap replaced on the hatch exit
of shelter three.

Future study and display
The good news is that Barnet Council
has agreed that one of the shelters can
be preserved for future visits and further
study, and the concrete cap of the
emergency exit of shelter three has now'
been replaced by a welded hatch secured
by a padlock. We have to thank
Middlesex University for this and for their interest in this
aspect of local history; their predecessor Hendon College,
in nearby Greyhound Hill, is known to have been the HQ
of the Home Guard in WWII.

The finds are being recorded and evaluated, but in the
meantime one piece of ‘treasure’ arrived from an
unexpected source. A local lad, six-year-old David Wolffe,
told us he had found an original wooden sign that had
once pointed the way to the shelters.

It is in remarkably good condition for a wooden artefact
seventy years old, and bears rusty nails and holes that
seem to indicate that it may have found later use as part
of a fence. The young boy had discovered it hidden behind
a hedge near his house on the edge of the park
The splendid sign, shown here, will be incorporated along
with some of the finds in a display later this year at
Church Farmhouse Museum, Greyhound Hill, Hendon
NW4 4JR www.churchfarmhousemuseum.co.uk.

All photos Nick Catford.

Wooden sign found in a hedge along the edge of the park. This is now on display at the
nearby Church Farmhouse Museum

'A'

15

A Blast from the Past

by Stew art Wild

Last year, I was browsing in the Cyprus Road Archives (as the piles of books and old papers in my home are known)
and came across a gem from 1968. This was a copy of the London Transport staff magazine from December of that
year (price threepence) that 1 must have bought years ago at a transport fair on account of an article about Brunei’s
famous Thames tunnel.

The article was written to celebrate the centenary of the railway in the world's first underwater tunnel, and I thought
that Sub Brit members would like to see it now that more than forty years have passed and the tunnel has recently
undergone a renaissance as part of London’s new Overground network.

Northern entrance to Brunei's tunnel under the Thames just after the East London Railway opened in December 1869

First railway under the Thames
. . . but Suez stole its thunder

T HE railway line built by a
company which possessed neither
.rolling stock nor locomotives cele¬
brated its centenary earlier this
month. It is the East London
branch of the Metropolitan line.

Just over five miles in length, it
runs from twin terminals at New
Cross and New Cross Gate stations
to Shoreditch, serving an area of
London that is steeped in history.
There are five intermediate stations
on the line at Surrey Docks (origin¬
ally Deptford Road), Rotherhithe,
Wapping, Shadwell and White¬
chapel.

The East London Railway, the
world’s first passenger railway under
a river, opened with a minimum of
publicity on Monday, December 6,
1869. The newspapers of the day did
not pay a great deal of attention to
the new line—the pages were still full
of the opening of the Suez Canal
three weeks earlier.

The first section of the line to

come into service was between New
Cross (now New Cross Gate) and
Wapping—about three miles away.
A report in The Times of December
7, 1869, said that “the works are
heavy owing to the line having to
descend from New Cross to the level
of the Thames Tunnel and having to
pass through a covered way of
about 200 yards in length before
entering the Thames Tunnel.”

The Times also reported that “the
works appeared to be solidly and
well constructed throughout" and
that the “line was in excellent
condition and the train consisted of
new carriages affording ample accom¬
modation for third class passengers.”

The railway company were given
a flying start in the job of building
the line. They purchased Brunei’s
tunnel under the Thames for the
bargain price of £200,000.

Cost of constructing the rest of the
three-mile double-track line from
New Cross to Wapping was

£1,158,000. The same job might well
cost in the region of £18 million
today.

The Thames Tunnel, built by
Marc Isambard Brunei (later Sir
Marc), was the first tunnel under the
river. It was originally intended as a
roadway under the Thames, and
work had begun on the project as
early as 1824.

Delays were numerous and the
task took 19 years to complete.
There were floodings, constant
dangers from marsh gas, numerous
accidents, several deaths and a
strike.

On completion there was no
money to construct the roadway
access at each end. And it had a
chequered career until 1865 when the
East London Railway company
sought powers to build their line,
using the tunnel for the section
between Rotherhithe and Wapping.

The present journey on a red
Metropolitan line train through the

16

So I asked our Editor if he could reproduce the article in its original double-page-spread form, as you can see. But our
Editor has gone one better, and has placed alongside two further articles, one by our Chairman about the tunnel's
construction, and the other nicely up-to-date with a report by Tim Robinson of a special tunnel visit and walk-through
earlier this year.

With this literary trio Sub Brit salutes your achievements, Mr Brunei, wherever you are!

Thames Tunnel takes less than a
minute. It is hard to imagine that
more than a century ago one
million people a year paid a penny
to stroll along the 433-yard-long
tunnel.

A reporter of the time described
it as having “the newest form of
illumination devised by man—
thousands of oil lamps which shone
brightly and hardly smelled at all."

Our East London line passengers
are whisked between the walls which
were once lined by stalls selling
Derbyshire spa cake, candy, ginger-
beer and other refreshment.

And they travel over the spots
where people once stood to admire
the fresco paintings or to watch
the “tightrope artistes, Ethiopian
serenaders and Indian and Chinese
exhibitions.”

From the outset the East London
line was worked by the London
Brighton and South Coast Railway,
which ran 46 passenger trains a day,
and the Great Eastern, who, from
1876, maintained the freight services.

At the opening of the line, the
East London Railway company
chairman, Mr. W. Hawes, said that
he believed the receipts from pas¬
senger and goods traffic would
exceed the forecast the company had
made. But he was proved to be
wrong.

The line attracted a reasonable
amount of passenger and goods
traffic at first. But in spite of being
extended in 1876 from Wapping to

Before the opening of the East London Railway the Thames Tunnel was for a time
a place of public entertainment with bands and performing animals as attractions

not until 1948 that the line itself
passed under the full control of
London Transport.

It was during the second world
war that the cross-London link
enjoyed its finest hour. Just before
D-day in 1944 vast quantities of
armour and ammunition flowed to
the forward assembly areas over the
East London tracks.

The East London line runs through
one of London’s most historical
areas. And a trip to Wapping station
is a history lesson in itself.

Wapping station is built in the
base of one of the shafts intended
by Brunei to carry the roadway
from street level to his tunnel. The
marks of the old staircase for
pedestrian access can still be seen
from the south end of the platforms.

Adjacent to the station are
Wapping Dock Stairs and a little
further away are the more famous
Wapping Old Stairs. The station
shaft adjoins the river wall at a
point reputed to be the site of the
famous Execution Dock where
pirates were hanged.

Bleak, deserted warehouses serve
as a reminder that the docks in this
area have declined in importance.
And there has been a lessening in
the traffic carried.

But there are plans for residential
development in the Surrey Docks
area, and the East London line can
look forward to a more vigorous
life, with the possibility of trains of
the proposed Fleet line running over
the tracks south of Surrey Docks.

A present day East Lon¬
don line train emerges
from the Thames Tunnel
into the platform at
Wapping. Six trains an
hour in each direction
pass under the river
through a tunnel built to
carry a road in the horse
and cart era but which
has withstood the vibra¬
tions of steam and
electric trains for a
hundred years

Bishopsgate and the introduction of
South Eastern Railway services from
New Cross, receipts declined.

It was not until 1884 that the
Metropolitan and District Railway
companies began to provide services
over the line. But these ceased by
1906 after both companies had com¬
pleted track electrification schemes
on their own lines.

For seven years the only services
were those operated by the London.
Brighton and South Coast and
South Eastern and Chatham Rail¬
ways.

In 1913, the East London line was
electrified, and the Metropolitan
Railway took over all passenger
services. Twenty years later, London
Transport became responsible for
passenger services, although it was

THE LINE
TODAY

17

Tunnel Vision - the building of the first underwater Thames Crossing

by Martin Dixon

Marc Isambard Brunei is often overshadowed by his son
Isambard Kingdom Brunei, but it is to both that we owe
the Thames tunnel at Rotherhithe. The vision and initiation
was Marc’s but it took Isambard to finish it after 18 long
years of construction.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century major docks
on the Thames included those at Wapping, Blackwall,
Surrey and the Isle of Dogs. Most of these were up to
four miles downstream of the nearest crossing point at
London Bridge. As well as this trading bottleneck, there
was also a military disadvantage of having to reinforce
the vulnerable County of Kent over a congested bridge
in the centre of a major city. Any bridge built lower down
the river would have to be of sufficient height to allow
ships to pass beneath or with a movable section. Neither
solution was easy from an engineering perspective.

A tunnel was the obvious solution but the ground was
soft and presented its own problems of stability and water
penetration. The same factors explain the comparative
paucity of tube tunnels to the south of the river. Marc
Brunei’s approach was to build the tunnel from a travelling
‘shield’ with the miners working the face from small
panels which were only exposed one section at a time. A
circular or rectangular ring of wood or iron held the
tunnelled ground at bay until supporting brickwork was
constructed behind this moving shield. The design was
allegedly inspired by the shipworm (Teredos navalis )
and in 1818 Marc took out a patent for the ‘Forming of
Drifts and Tunnels Underground’.

On 24 June 1824, the Bill for ‘Making and Maintaining a
Tunnel under the Thames’ was given Royal Assent. The
tunnel was to connect Rotherhithe and Wapping and

Tunnel under construction

would be 1,300 feet (396 metres) long. Marc had lobbied
hard to gain approval - a key supporter was the Duke of
Wellington.

The construction aim was for the tunnel to follow the
narrow clay band between the quicksand below and the
gravel beds above. This brought the roof of the tunnel
perilously close to the river bed, as subsequent events
would sadly prove. Construction started on the south bank
at Rotherhithe in March 1825 when a vertical shaft was
sunk by constructing a cylinder of bricks that sank under
its own weight. Boring of the tunnel itself commenced in
November of the same year and that is when the troubles
began.

Shortly after work started Marc became ill and his son
Isambard became involved with the project. At the tender
age of 20, Isambard soon became resident engineer. By
1827, steady progress was being made and, in the absence
of twentieth-century Health and Safety rules, members
of the public were admitted to marvel at the engineering.
In April 1827, for example, over 700 were admitted at
one shilling (5p) each. In May the first flood occurred
when water broke through from the Thames above and
flooded the workings. Fortunately no lives were lost but
this record was not to be maintained.

Isambard’s response to this influx was to fill the hole
from the river above with iron bars and clay, using a
diving bell to monitor operations. The tunnel was then
able to be pumped out and work recommenced. Marc
suffered a stroke in August 1827 and never enjoyed good
health thereafter.

Celebration banquet in November 1827

18

After reopening, a ‘Celebration Banquet’ was held
underground in November 1827. This celebration turned
out to be more than a little premature as just two months
later the second inundation took place, this time injuring
Isambard himself and killing six workmen. In August of
the same year, the money ran out, work was halted and
the tunnel itself was bricked up.

The grand entrance hall

It was fully seven years later that fresh funds were raised
to allow work to continue. Both Brunels remained involved
but Isambard was by now busy with the surveying of the
Great Western Railway and the position of Chief Engineer
went instead to Richard Beamish. A new and larger
tunnelling shield was installed and excavations continued
in 1835. Thomas Page in turn took over the position of
Chief Engineer in 1836.

Over the next three years a further three floods took
place: on each occasion the river bed had to be plugged

and the tunnel pumped dry. In addition, explosions from
firedamp (methane) became a regular occurrence. In
1840, as the marathon project neared completion, Marc
was knighted and in 1842 work commenced on the shaft
on the north side. It had, in all respects, been a Wapping
project.

The tunnel was finally opened in 1843 as a foot tunnel
with visitors descending spiral staircases within the shafts

The tunnel in use

at each end. The original plan was to have ramps for
vehicular traffic but these were never constructed; the
tunnel thus became a novelty attraction rather than the
transport thoroughfare initially projected.

In the first ten days, a staggering 100,000 visitors passed
through the tunnel for a toll of a penny each. Fifteen
weeks later the number had exceeded one million
(London’s population was around two million at this time).
For several years the tunnel remained a popular attraction
but, despite the introduction of fairs and fire-eaters, stalls
and sword-swallowers, by 1860 the tunnel was run down
and populated by vagrants.

The railway age had by then produced its own engineering
marvels and it was the railways that were to prove the
tunnel’s salvation.

From The Brunels ’ Tunnel , published 2006; edited by
EricKentley. ISBN 0-9504361-2-7

Brunei’s Thames Tunnel Walk - March 2010

by Tim Robinson

Even though I was quick off the mark when the email
arrived on the Sub Brit list I wasn’t too surprised to find
the LU website was showing no tickets for all the
available visiting times. This was duly confirmed by
another email arriving ten minutes later saying all the
tickets were gone. What a shame.

This was doubly annoying as back in January 2010 myself
(Tim Robinson), Bob Clary, Richard Savage and Steve
Underwood had visited the Brunei Museum to have a
look at the Rotherhithe Tunnel shaft. Our guide was full
of enthusiasm about a future event where visitors would

be able to walk the tunnel below our feet and experience
the Victorian markets they used to have down there back
in the mid-1800s. On our way back to the pub 1 voiced
my usual optimism by saying how good that would be but
it all seemed a bit unlikely!

Not to be outdone I called the London Transport Museum
and asked to speak to someone organising the Thames
Tunnel walks. Ten rings in and the phone was picked up
by a very friendly lady and I started on my quest for
tickets.

19

“Yes, it was very popular and no there was no chance
to do a special evening just for Sub Brit Members...
but did I want some tickets as they were about to
release a few more times?”

Safety briefing

smaller group consisted of the January Brunei attendees
plus Robin Ware, Jane MacGregor, Michael Harvey, Alex
Lomas and two of his friends.

The Thames Tunnel before lining in 1996 It didn ’ t ta ke long to be shepherded into the booking hall

Like most instant questions I'd got no prepared answer to sign a disclaimer, hand over our bags and be ready to

so just said “Yes please " in the hope it would stall her. go down the escalator to platform level. Chatting to our

Luckily there were no options on the times being added back-marker guide we discovered they’d been busy all

so she confirmed I could have five tickets for the 1800hrs day and had added as many additional tours for people

visit on Saturday 13 March. 1 was slightly taken aback turning up on spec. Everyone had enjoyed the chance to

at the ease of this transaction and after putting the phone see the tunnels before the train service began. Down on

down started to think who’d join me on the trip. After the new Rotherhithe platform we had the usual safety

getting up to seven people I knew I’d not given this much briefing including what not to stand on and a short piece
thought, so back to the phone. of history about what we were going to see.

“I'm afraid you can only have a maximum of five At this end there is more of the overall tunnel before

tickets per debit card order. I can try booking another going into the bores, so we stopped for the next part of

5 but I’m sure it won't go through... <PAUSE, TAP, the story and a chance to look around.

TAP TAP, ENTER. PAUSE>. On the wall was a notice telling us we were 40m from

Well it's never done that before but it says you've got Rotherhithe and had 400m to go to Wapping. Heading

another 5 tickets. ”

Clearly someone wanted us to
see the tunnel!

After a relaxing afternoon at The
Rake in Borough Market we
enjoyed a very pleasant walk
along the Thames footpath
towards Rotherhithe. Upon
arrival there was a Victorian
market and funfair outside the
Brunei Museum and a smallish
group of people standing outside
the station. It looked reasonably
busy but after chatting to our
chairman, Martin Dixon, in the
following week this was nothing
compared to the chaos and
queues of the afternoon visits.

Apparently, a news reporter had
announced on local radio that
people could just turn up and

walk the tunnels! Our much Looking back at Rotherhithe platforms

At the mid-way point looking back towards Rotherhithe

These were the pumps which
had to keep the continual flow
of ground water in check. If
they failed the bores would
start to fill up in a matter of
hours. He then showed us the
channel in the track bed
where the water flowed from
and you could easily imagine
things going wrong quickly as
it was a fast-flowing stream.
All too soon we were back
on the platform and heading
up the stairs to get our bags
and wash our hands. Already
the next group were waiting
to go down the stairs and
there were still plenty outside
waiting in the twilight queue.
As we wandered back to
London Bridge we all agreed
it had been a great little trip

into the northbound bore, I dropped back from the main
group to try to get some good photos and was joined by
our back-marker guide and Robin and Jane. We chatted
about the tunnel, trips and schedules for the arrival of
the trains while I snapped away. There was gentle
pressure to keep moving and as we reached the mid¬
point of the north bore the sight of the next group just
entering made this all the more necessary!

Reaching Wapping wed caught up with the main group
and heard some more about Brunei and his original plans
for the tunnels. The portals at this end are painted yellow
though I didn’t catch why from our guide (not discernible
in the photo but worth a look if you’re there). They’re
really quite striking in this colour and whether it was
original or not you’ll get an excellent view of them from
the Wapping platform.

The group in front had just headed back down the
southbound bore so we gave them a bit of time to get to
the middle before we duly followed them. The bores are
not enclosed as you'd expect on a normal tube tunnel but
have regular arched openings into the adjacent bore. Flat
column profiles are on either side of the arches with those
lines going up and over the bore, disappearing behind the
cable hangers and reappearing at the junction with the
track bed. On the arch return faces there is a curved
column with cap which supports a smaller inner arch.
As we made our way back along the southbound bore
we were slowly caught up by the group behind us who
were clearly on a ’keep moving’ visit! Nonetheless we
had time for final photos and to take in where we were.
As we exited the bore our guide pointed out the sound of
rushing water from a nearby grille in the floor.

Yellow portals at Wapping station

and something that may not be again on public view for
quite sometime...

Photos Tim Robinson, except 1996 view.

Column detail in the arches

There was oil in them there hills

by Allan Kilpatrick

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Auchmtout

INVERGORDON

When I was a boy, I heard that there was a secret at
Invergordon: rumours of an underground complex that
was said to exist. I had always wanted to know more.
Last year, as an archaeological investigator for the Royal
Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments
of Scotland (RCAHMS), I was finally able to explore
the complex. This paper is a summary of the early results
of research on the Inchindown oil storage tanks and is
illustrated using photographs of the complex taken during
the RCAHMS photographic survey in October 2009.
Introduction

In the first decade of the twentieth century the Royal
Navy used coal to power her ships. The adoption of fuel
oil across the fleet presented the Royal Navy with a new
range of supply and

storage problems.
Coal was easy to
store, but furnace
fuel oil was a sticky
thick mass. It
required large
storage facilities
with purpose-built
tanks. The oil

needed to be

pumped in and out of
the tanks and
required heating to
allow it to be moved
which meant large
onshore equipment,
pumps and power.
The result was large
purpose-built fuel
facilities at all the
main naval bases
across the Empire.
The Royal Navy had
first adopted the
Cromarty Firth as a
naval anchorage

Location map of Invergordon and
Lyness, and a map showing the
location of Inchindown and
Seabanks and Cromlet tank farms at
Invergordon.

ess

lc*im

Inchindown and Invergordon

inchindown Oil Tanks
■ ■ ■ Pipeline

Seabanks and Cromlet

before WWI. It was Winston Churchill, as First Lord of
the Admiralty, who pressed for Invergordon and the
Cromarty Firth to be used as a home port for the grand
fleet. The Cromarty Firth is a large natural harbour on
the east coast of Scotland, to the north of Inverness.
Through Churchill’s persistence, he pushed through the
construction of the fixed defences for the Firth in 1913.
Unusually these were built by and manned by Royal Navy
Marines and not the Army, leading to questions in the
House. Those defences, comprising emplacements for
9.2inch guns and 4inch QF (Quick Firing) guns and

attendant underground
magazines, are still extant and
can be visited.

The Royal Navy base was
established at Invergordon, and
initially shore facilities were few
and the fleet was serviced by
depot ships. But with the
adoption of furnace fuel oil,
onshore storage was required
and two large oil tank farms
saitbi were constructed during and
between the wars, at Seabanks
and Cromlet, both on the
northern edge of Invergordon.
The two tank farms held an
impressive 110,000 tons of fuel
oil. The oil was fed by pipe to
the Admiralty pier where ships
could refuel directly, or onto
smaller ships to be transferred to the warships in the
Firth. The tanks were in active use throughout both World
Wars, and remained in use until the fuel depot was
decommissioned in the 1990s.

The threat from Germany

The rise of German military power under the Nazi regime
during the 1930s did not go unnoticed by the British
military, in particular the Royal Navy. The expansion of
the German Navy was seen as a huge threat to the
superiority of the Royal Navy, but the Admiralty were

(c) Crown Copyright and database rights 2009. All £i^hts
Reserved. Ordinance Survey Licence number 100020548

also concerned about the threat the new Luftwaffe posed
to the naval ships and ports. In the mid-1930s, as Britain
recovered from the Great Depression, much of the
defences protecting the fleet had been dismantled and
lay abandoned. Those defences had been against surface
raiders and not the threat posed by the new long-range
bombers that Germany possessed.

The Spanish Civil War (1936-9) had, for the first time,
demonstrated the real power of aerial bombardment and
the British were all too aware of the damage that could
be inflicted. The Admiralty understood that should its
supply bases be bombed and the ports became unusable,
then the ability of the Royal Navy to maintain and protect
the shipping lanes would be severely affected. In
particular, if the fuel supplies were destroyed then the
Royal Navy could not function and the British Isles would
be vulnerable to blockade and invasion.

The problem in the mid-1930s was
that these large oil installations
were particularly vulnerable to
aerial bombing. They were large
sites, not easy to camouflage, and
were often built close together with
little thought to blast protection. The
oil itself was, of course, also
inflammable. The Admiralty
understood that if these installations
were put out of action the Royal
Navy would be unable to support
the country.

Going Underground
In 1937 the Admiralty put together
a scheme to place oil storage
underground at its main naval
anchorages and a sum of £16
million was set aside to put as much
oil in bomb-proof underground
storage as possible. The three largest sites were at
Portsmouth, Lyness at Scapa Flow and Invergordon.
These were thought to be the main naval anchorages in
any future war. Other small facilities were built at most
naval ports: Plymouth, Harwich, Dover and Portland to
name but a few. Others had hardened storage, such as
Rosyth, protected by many feet of concrete and soil.
The underground storage facilities each presented their
own problems when it came to construction. The location,
construction and underlying geology all played a part in
how they were designed and built. They needed to be
able to resist any German bombing so had to be deep
underground and within a suitable rock. The Portsmouth
tanks at Portsdown Hill were constructed in chalk, easy
to excavate and close by the anchorage. The Lyness
depot was constructed on Fea Hill directly behind the
main Lyness naval base. But at Invergordon there was a
real problem.

The hinterland of Invergordon is comprised entirely of
low-lying glacial deposits and drift geology with no
suitable bedrock. The only option was some four miles
inland where the geology changes and hills rise up from
the low-lying ground. Various locations would have been
assessed and what may be a trial adit, recently discovered
by the Forestry Commission during tree-felling work, was
dug to locate suitable rock.

The geology had to be of a rock type that would allow
tunnelling to take place, and be free from geological faults
and groundwater. Immediately above Inchindown
farmhouse a suitable location was identified. This took
advantage of a steep-sided hill in an area of hard Old
Red Sandstone, with well-defined horizontal bedding
planes which would aid construction. It could be built at
a suitable height above sea level to allow the oil to flow
downhill to the naval base.

Construction at Inchindown started in 1938. Most men
were employed locally but others, especially those with
tunnelling experience, were brought in. As the threat of
war turned to a reality many local men went to join the
forces, although all workers at Inchindown were exempt
from call-up until construction was completed. Any
shortage in manpower was filled by Irishmen, long
remembered by the locals.

The task of the project was huge and provided much
needed employment. The consulting engineers, Robert
Mac Alpine, were involved in the design of all three large
underground storage tanks. The contractors are reported
locally to have been Baldry, Yerborough and Hutchison
though a lot of sub-contracting was undertaken.

The scale of the project was immense, the largest single
construction in the Highlands since the Caledonian Canal,
and certainly the largest underground excavation until
the Ben Cruachan pump storage hydro scheme in the
1960s.

View of Inchindown Farm and the side of Kinrive Hill. Cutting across the deforested
hillside is the access track, with two tunnel entrances and other small structures.
Copyright: Allan Kilpatrick

23

A vertical air photograph taken on the 21 September 1944. Lying within the semi natural
woodland disturbed soil showing as white can be seen. To the west the huge soil tip is clearly
visible. What is much harder to see is the location of the construction yard, workers camp and
the pipeline as the landscape has been restored to hide the fact that they ever existed.

© RCAHMS (RAF Air photograph Collection)

Construction

As described above, the site was at 150m above sea
level, some four miles away from Invergordon. The
interior design of the tanks was almost identical to the
other two depots, but unlike Portsdown and Lyness, both
entrances were on the same side of the hill. Presumably
the more standard arrangement of an entrance on either
side of the tanks was not suitable given the size and nature
of the hill into which the tanks were to be built.

The plan called for six tanks, with two service tunnels,
associated equipment, drainage, sumps and ventilation.
At their deepest the tunnels are 140m below ground. Five
tanks were to be 237m long by 9m wide by 13.5m high,
each containing 5.6 million gallons of fuel oil and the sixth
and final tank was 171m long by 9m wide by 13.5m high.
The combined capacity was 32 million gallons of fuel,
approximately 100,000 tons. The numbers seem vast but
so was the Royal Navy’s consumption: a single King
George V battleship could swallow up 5,000 tons of fuel
in its bunkers.

The tanks themselves were vast caverns, a long single
space, concrete-lined and with arched roof. The concrete
lining to the tanks was 18 inches thick. Within each tank
there was a system to heat the oil, consisting of electric
heating pipes laid on a system of racking extending across
the floor in each tank. Little heating would be required in
the tanks as the heat would be contained within the
concrete and rock insulating it. The oil temperature was
checked frequently by means of brass rods from an
inspection hole above one end of the tanks.

Construction started with
two adits which were to
become the access
tunnels, driven into the hill
some 219m apart. Work
progressed by means of
blasting and then removing
the spoil by EIMCO
mechanical diggers into
carts to be taken by a
narrow-gauge tramway to
the spoil heap. The blasting
operations were dangerous
and technically difficult.
The levels and direction in
the two access tunnels had
to be exact and traditional
tunnelling techniques were
adopted.

Some of the drillers were
ex 'hydro boys’ with
experience of tunnel work
from the early hydro¬
electric schemes in the
Highlands. Using large
drills they made holes
which were packed with
explosive and fired. After a blast the dust would be allowed
to settle and after 20 minutes the foreman would check
over the work, before the tunnel lers would return and
drilling started.

The EIMCO machine, powered by compressed air,
scooped up the debris and loaded it into carts to be taken
to the spoil heap. The major difficulty faced by the
tunnellers was the dust. It was a very dry tunnel with
little water ingress and therefore the dust did not settle.
The tunnels were not fitted with any form of extraction
or ventilation system and consequently many of the
workers suffered from silicosis in later life. Rock falls
were common after blasting, and together with other
industrial accidents meant that it was not the safest place
to work and death and serious injuries occurred.

Wages were high and one local story tells of two Irishmen
who went to Glasgow on their two days off. On arrival
in Glasgow each bought a new suit, before going to the
dances, then returning to the construction site and
working in their new suit before doing it all again!

Many men lived nearby and many cycled to work for the
14 hour shift. Other workers were housed in a
construction camp nearby and had entertainment laid on,
including a visit by Gracie Fields in 1940. The main
construction facilities were built next to Inchindown Farm,
including offices of the contractor, and the Admiralty,
concrete makers, wood store, joiners, electricians, pipe
workers.... and the list goes on.

24

As the work progressed, most of the tunnels and the
tanks were lined in concrete; ventilation systems and
pumps were added, pipe work completed, and electric
lighting installed. Not all of the smaller access tunnel was
concreted and some parts have wooden shoring which
appears to have been installed just after completion.

View of the second tunnel, showing the exposed rock and
timber shoring. The concrete floor has a small drainage
channel and below the floor is the ventilation ducting.
Photo copyright Nick Catford

Worked was completed in 1941 and the complex became
operational. Any evidence of the construction yard and
accommodation camp was removed. However the spoil
heap containing over 200,000m 3 of rock could not be
hidden.

After Inchindown was completed some workers were
offered the chance to complete the tanks at Lyness.
However many local men were keen to join the services
and opted for military service instead.

Description of the complex

The tunnel system at Inchindown is simple but the
structure hides much of the complex engineering. The
vast size of the tanks dwarfs the rest of the system, but
a description may give a better understanding of the feat
of engineering and construction.

Access to the complex is along a gravel track, part of
which was formerly a tramway. The site itself does not
appear to have been fenced or protected. During the
War the hillside was covered in a semi-natural woodland,
later replaced by a forestry plantation.

The first signs of any infrastructure are a few small brick-
built structures, one of which may be an explosive store
used during construction, and a ventilation shaft. Then,
in a level area, an entrance into the large main tunnel
can be seen.

The "Piping Tunnel" today

As you approach the tunnel there is still a faint smell of
residual oil. On opening the large metal gate a long tunnel
extends into the darkness; beside the gate is a small room
containing the ventilation fan. The tunnel, which the
RCAHMS has called the piping tunnel, is about 3m in

View of the entrance to the main pipe access tunnel.
The pipes carrying the oil lie below the tunnel floor.
Copyright: RCAHMS

diameter, lined in shuttered concrete. Below the concrete
floor, accessed by inspection covers, are the two pipes
which transported the oil to and from Invergordon. The
first part of the tunnel is c. 119m long, before turning to
the left and extending a further c. 130m to the end where
the end wall is of exposed rock.

Looking towards the far end of the tunnel from Tank One.
The doorways to the valve chambers can be seen
on the right Copyright: RCAHMS

In the second part of the tunnel and on the north side
there is a series of six doors, numbered one to six, set in
corrugated iron sheets enclosing a chamber.

The valve chamber

The valve chamber extends 7m in from the tunnel and
contains a 45cm-diameter pipe which comes out of the
concrete wall from the tank beyond. The pipe has a
manual value to control the flow of oil in and out of the
tank. A second fitting for a pipe, possibly a reserve pipe,
is next to the main pipe.

Also contained within the valve chamber is a winch. This
is positioned below a 15m high shaft containing an access
ladder. Also within the shaft is a gauge to record the
level of oil the tank. The maximum depth recorded on
the gauge is 12.5m. On climbing the ladder you reach
the upper chamber.

The chamber is 9.75m long (including the shaft), and has
a gas-proof door leading to an inspection platform. To

25

FAN ROOM

INCHINDOWN
FUEL TANK LAYOUT

CONCRETE LINED FUEL TANK

CONCRETE LINED TUNNEL

ROCK-CUT TUNNEL

FAN ROOM

View of the door and
corrugated iron
screen to the valve
chamber of Tank Two.
A large metal hook to
the left of the metal
screen suggests that
screen and door may
not be an original
feature.

Copyright: RCAHMS

Detailed view of the valve chamber for Tank One, showing
the pipework from the tank. The large valve wheel to control
the flow of oil is in the foreground, and may have been
bigger than originally planned as some concrete was
removed from the wall. Copyright: RCAHMS

Plan of the layout of lnchindown (plan by kind permission of David Cook)

TUNNEL

entrance

TUNNEL

ENTRANCE

the right of the door is a small chamber with a metal-
capped hole which was used to measure the temperature
of the oil using brass rods which were lowered down
into the oil tank.

View of the entire valve from the doorway, showing the
winch in the foreground and the oil depth gauge on the left.
The access ladder to the upper chamber is on the right.
Copyright: RCAHMS

View of upper chamber taken from the top of the shaft.

The author is pictured standing on the inspection platform
looking down into the tank. The side chamber on the
right of the photo is where the temperature of the oil was
monitored. To the left of the image, on the floor of the
chamber and protected by a wooden casing, was the
cable for the float gauge measuring the depth of the
oil in the tank. Copyright: RCAHMS

Moving through the doorway is the inspection platform:
the scale of the tanks is apparent as you look down into
the tank. To the left of the platform there is a 14m ladder
which drops vertically down to the tank floor. The depth
gauge equipment is also present, as is the series of joists
which supported the raising and lowering of the inflow/
outflow pipe in the tank, using the winch located in the
lower valve chamber.

View from the inspection platform into Tank Two.

The inflow/outflow pipe can be seen lying in a sump in
the floor of the tank. The cables for hoisting the pipe up
are in the left foreground. These cables were attached to
the w'inch at the bottom of the shaft. The heating pipes
are still in situ. On the left side there is the access ladder
and two cables for the float gauge. Copyright: RCAHMS

The chambers were once painted white; only the valve
chamber for Tank Six has any paintwork surviving.
Along the length of the piping tunnel floor are inspection
covers to access the pipework and the water drainage
system. The electrical work is still visible but has been
upgraded during the lifetime of the complex.

Returning outside there are more structures but only one
building. Described as the control room, it controlled the
power on the site. The complex did not have its ow r n
power and must have been fed from either the local grid
or from the electrical generators at Seabanks tank farm
at Invergordon. The other structures to be found around
the site have to do with drainage of w ater, an oil sump,
and what appears to be small overflow tanks, but further
work has to be undertaken first to determine the role of
these structures.

Secondary Access Tunnel

The second access tunnel is in many ways the more
interesting of the two. It is narrow, and on the left side
before you enter, there is a door to a room containing the
ventilation fan. Unfortunately no access into that room
is possible at present.

On entering the tunnel through the metal door, the
ventilation extraction duct is on the left and below the
floor is the main water drainage for the tunnel. The lined
concrete tunnel extends some 21 Om into the hillside before
the concrete lining stops and the tunnel becomes bare
rock. The whole tunnel is remarkably free from water
ingress and is very stable geologically.

27

The entrance to the second access tunnel. Copyright:

RCAHMS

View of the
second service
tunnel from
the entrance
doorway.
Copyright:
RCAHMS

Just a few metres beyond where the concrete lining
finishes the tunnel changes direction, similar to the first
tunnel. The tunnel size increases to accommodate an
access to the first tank. This chamber would have had a
corrugated metal screen similar to the piping tunnel. This
chamber is lined with concrete and on the far wall there
are four access pipes set into the wall of the tank. At the
access to Tank One an inscription set into the concrete
has the date of February 1941.

View of the access chamber to Tank One showing four
access pipes leading into the fuel tank. A date is
recorded here as February MCMXLI AD (1941).
Copyright: Nick Catford

The four pipes are about 8 feet long, and were the main
way of entering the tanks to carry out maintenance. Each
of the five large tanks had such access chambers leading
off it. Each chamber had forced ventilation, supplying
fresh air provided by the fan at the entrance. The ducting
runs under the concrete floor. After passing Tank Five
the tunnel turns 90 degrees left and extends a further
66m to finish at the sixth access chamber. The access
chamber to Tank Six still has the corrugated iron screen
and within the chamber is the equipment to allow easier
access into the tank. Each tank access had these, but
only this one remains.

View of access
chamber to
Tank Six. In the
foreground is
the trolley
equipment for
moving people
and equipment
into the tank.
Copyright:
RCAHMS

The Tanks

Tank Six is some 66m smaller than the other five. This
smaller tank measures only 171m long and appears never
to have been used by the Navy, possibly kept as a
reserve, or overflow. The tank is clean, and free of oil,
and almost completely dry. This chamber still has the
heating system used to heat the oil in the tank prior to
moving it down the pipeline. The system of pipes is
supported above the floor by racking; these pipes would
heat the oil gently until reaching a suitable temperature
for flowing down the pipeline.

The other tanks all had the heating system broken and
removed in part to allow for cleaning after closure. Some
of the racking has been piled up against the side of the
tank as was too difficult to remove it. Before the tanks
were handed over to the new owner, contractors spent
three weeks cleaning and removing residual oil. Some
cleaning equipment has been left.

Looking down the access pipes into the tanks, the size of
these tanks is revealed. The cathedral-like size of the
tank can be appreciated, as can its architecture with its
arched roof, vertical sides and what appears to be a flat
bottom. The size of these tanks is truly impressive and

Copyright: RCAHMS

even the small tank is much longer than the length of
York Minster.

The difficulties of excavating six such tanks so close
together cannot be underestimated. The five main tanks
each held over 5.6 million gallons of fuel when full and
the depot had a total capacity of over 32 million gallons
of fuel.

Since the tanks have been abandoned very little water
appears to have seeped in to the tanks and some are
completely dry. However, above the rock in the second
tunnel just beside the access chamber for Tank Two, oil
has leaked out of the tank and has seeped through the
rock into the tunnel.

During the RCAHMS photographic survey we could not
directly access the inside of the tanks. However, the
RCAHMS photographers were able to take imagery of
the inside of the tanks which gives at least some
impression of the sheer scale of these structures.

Blast walls

The final piece of construction in the tunnels was the
installation of blast walls, traces of which can be seen in
both tunnels. These were added after construction was
completed and the tunnels had been lined with concrete.

The brick remains of the two blast walls in the main
tunnel can be seen, as well as the holes in the roof
for the metal rods. Copyright: RCAHMS

They comprised walls extending over threequarters of
the width of the tunnel, made with firebricks and
reinforced with metal bars. The four walls in the smaller
access tunnel and three walls in the larger piping tunnel
were built out from alternate walls to provide a zig-zag
barrier w hich would deflect and reduce the shock wave
of any explosive blast.

In each case the concrete lining was raggled out and
brickwork added. In addition a sliding metal door on each
wall was added to close off the tunnel completely. These
blast walls were removed in the 1960s and it took two
men an entire year to dismantle the walls in the second
access tunnel, such was the strength of the construction
and material used.

Pipeline to Invergordon

The pipeline down to Invergordon was four miles long
and was excavated without mechanical aids. The pipeline
itself was an achievement as it comprised two pipes to
carry the flow.

The oil was pumped up to Inchindown using large pumps
installed at a pumping station atTomich Junction. The
pump house is still standing but has been heavily adapted
and extended to become a modern domestic house. The
return journey used the power of gravity.

It is said that two further pumps were installed to assist
the main pumping station; indeed two small brick-built
structures can be found along the length of the pipeline.
These may have housed additional pumps, but are more
likely to have been electrical sub-stations to heat the
pipeline.

Furnace fuel oil needed to be heated to make it flow, so
heaters were installed at regular intervals along its length
to heat steam for a pipe below the oil pipeline thus
preventing the oil from becoming too viscous. The pipeline
can be traced along its length, although only when it
crosses a stream can you see the pipework itself. The
oil could be pumped directly on to the pier or held in the
many tanks at Seabanks or Cromlet tank farms.
Seabanks and Cromlet tank farms
Seabanks and its sister tank farm of Cromlet were
constructed before and during WW1. The huge complex,
which held up to 110,000 tons of oil, was a massive project
in itself. The tanks were all metal structures and the
quality of their build is apparent as they are still in good
condition almost 100 years later. The complex had its
own power supply and was able to pump oil and water
around both farms. The south side of Seabanks tank farm
was separated from the town, by a series of earth banks
or bunds, and drainage systems to prevent spills entering
the town, and the railway cutting carried out that job to
the north side. The tanks held Furnace Fuel Oil, water
and by WWII other fuel including aviation fuel, which
was delivered by lorry to numerous airfields as far away
as RAF Kinloss.

There are some interesting issues in the tank farms’
operational history. Local reports tell that during WWII

the tanks were given protection by an addition of bricks
walls encasing the tanks, which were then removed after
the War. At least two tanks still have brick walls.

On 15 February 1941 a single German bomber, flying at
low level in daylight, flew towards Seabanks oil tank farm
and dropped two 500kg bombs, resulting in the collapse
of Tank 13 and damage to the adjoining tank. It was
alleged that it was the only tank to be full of oil. No one
was injured and the only casualty was said to be a cart
horse that ingested some of the oil that flowed down the
railway line, through part of the town and into the Firth.
The bomb caused no explosion and the escaped oil flowed
into the Firth causing widespread pollution and the loss
of sea birds in particular. The German raider managed to
escape having fired on and damaged at least one seaplane
lying at anchor in the Firth. Ground defences did not fire
a shot at it. It is ironic that the Germans chose that month
to bomb the tanks when it was the same month that
construction was completed at Inchindown.

The tanks at Inchindown remained in service after the
Royal Navy base at Invergordon closed in 1956.

Part of the Seabank tank farm in 1947. showing the
camouflage paint scheme still extant, and the gap of the
missing Number 13 tank. Copyright: RCAHMS

Inchindown was reported to be at full capacity during
the Falklands War. The writing was on the wall for the
Inchindown complex from the late 1960s, when the Royal
Navy adopted diesel fuel for new ships.

After 1982 Inchindown was placed in care and
maintenance. By 1970 the number of Royal Navy ships
requiring Furnace Fuel Oil were reducing and by 1992
only the last few Leander class Frigates and the Royal
Yacht still required Furnace Fuel Oil. In 1988 a plan was
announced to have the fuel depot upgraded to become a

NATO fuel depot with improvements to Inchindown and
the pipeline. Flowever the plan fell through and
Inchindown was decommissioned and disposed of in 2002.

The future

Apart from the cleaning, much of Inchindown remains
as it was when it was decommissioned. The site has not
been damaged and much of the original equipment
remains in situ. As it stands it is almost in a museum-like
condition. The future is uncertain however.

The present owner had examined reopening it as a fuel
storage depot but the current standards meant it was
impossible to convert. At present it stands empty and a
bit of a mystery to many. In September and October
2009, thanks to Doors Open Day, Forest Heritage
Scotland and the Highland Archaeology Festival, almost
200 members of the public were given a chance to explore
the tunnels. However the difficulties and expense of
opening it up to the public mean that it may be some time
before the public can again explore the complex again.
There is widespread local interest, but its location is not
common knowledge. The complex is not at risk from
anything except a very determined vandal.

Conclusion

The Inchindown complex was a massive undertaking,
done in remarkable secrecy involving huge manpower
and incredible resources at a time when many of these
were urgently required for other projects. In terms of
the quality of materials, the standards of construction and
the sheer amount of effort, time and money involved, it
is a remarkable structure.

Ironically the necessity of the underground installation
was never fully realised as the invasion of Norway meant
that the Cromarty Firth became particularly vulnerable
to bombing and especially to mining of the approaches to
the Firth with its narrow single entrance. Despite this,
many in the Royal Navy still thought it very suitable,
especially for east coast convoys. The fuel depot was
used throughout the war, ships often arriving in the
evening and refuelling overnight and returning to sea by
first light.

Inchindown stands as a monument to British military
engineering, beautifully constructed to the highest
standards. Yet before the complex was even finished
Invergordon was no longer the vital navy anchorage that
the Royal Navy expected. However the fact that the
facility was used, and kept by the Royal Navy into the
1990s demonstrates its importance as a secure oil store.
I would like to thank the RCAHMS for providing support
and resources for undertaking the survey and research;
the Tanks’ owners; the Forestry Commission; David Cook
for his plan; Nick Catford and the members of the public
for their help and stories.

A detailed photographic record of Inchindown and
Seabanks can be found on the RCAHMS web site
www.rcahms.gov.uk.

30

‘Joie de vivre’ - Jessica’s mountain revisited: Sweden - October 2009

Bob Lawson

It was the spring of ’68 with flowers in their hair, at
the height of the Cold War in Sweden; elsewhere the
Soviet army had invaded Czechoslovakia and their
Prime Minister Alexander Dubcek had been arrested
and taken back to Moscow. Over the previous six
months international relations had been deteriorating
rapidly from a period of high tension to potential
A rmageddon.

The two world superpowers had been posturing with
army manoeuvres near the expected battle zone of
mainland Europe. The Swedish Government was
concerned that their neutral status would be
challenged by their Superpower neighbour and they
had to be ready if their policy of armed neutrality’
was to work. The international situation caused the
Government reluctantly to enforce National
Mobilization of its armed forces with full operational
availability within 72hrs.

It was with this background that six English-speaking
conscripts found themselves on a military transport flying
to a restricted secret island controlled by KA5 Coastal
Artillery, almost 600 km from Stockholm, strategically
placed at the mouth of the river Angermanalven near to
Hamosand on the coast of northern Sweden. They had
received the instruction to leave their full-time civilian
jobs and families and go to their mobilization posting, to
help make it operational within 72 hours.

The pilot of their aircraft, a Captain Ryan, had designated
the nearest airfield to their destination on his flight plan
as the military aerodrome of Skavsta near Stockholm.
(The saving in fuel and time was not wasted on the
Captain as he thought about what he might do after
leaving the Air Force. Over many trips, the additional
unauthorised charge to his military passengers for coffee
and parachutes had also proved to be a discrete profit
opportunity.)

The conscripts avoided the Saab strike aircraft dispersed
throughout the airfield and headed for the motor pool;
two Volvo cars were assigned and drivers nominated.
The six-hour 600-km drive to the rendezvous point (RV)
gave them an opportunity to get to know each other once
more and catch up with intel since their last annual training
period. The sad news that one of their fellow conscripts
had died on operational duties while planning a future
expedition cast its shadow over the proceedings. Daniel
McKenzie, Dan to his friends, had seen action in most of
the major Bunker conflicts of previous years and had a
reputation for efficiency and good organisation with a
happy disposition; his ‘joie de vivre’ would be sadly
missed.

The secret destination was reached via a special vehicle
ferry that took them onto the island of Hemso. All aliens

were forbidden from entry and the whole of this restricted
secret area was heavily guarded.

SKYDDSOMR&DE

Tilltrade fSrbjudet Wdf ulKJnnliy;

RESTRICTED AREA

Eotry prohibited to. aliens

SPERRGEBIET

fur Auslanrfer yerbolen

ZONE PROW I BEE

■7^PHPPH|pR|PVPi ®S--

AccVs inttrdlt aux Grangers

SUOIA - AtUE

P8«»y ulkomoolaisllto

flocryn HH0CTP3HU3M

information Tcl« (61

Prohibition sign at the ferry

The party waited at the RV point and shortly the
detachment of 17 local personnel joined them from Storra
mountain with their two officers Lars and Carl. The
meeting place was a hill at the end of a peninsula which
jutted out into the Baltic Sea. This whole area was part
of the Hemso Fortress complex constructed a few years
before in the 1950s and 60s, the first part being ready for
use in 1957. The complex based on the island consisted
of two artillery batteries, the light battery on Havstoudd
and the heavy battery on the Storra mountain. The six
new conscripts knew the Storra mountain better as
‘Jessica’s mountain’ from a previous visit when Jessica
had made them all welcome. Unfortunately the impatience
of time had again interfered and Jessica had been posted
to another site.

The wind blew off the cold sea and up the hill to the RV
point through the fir trees growing all over the typical
rocky boulder-strewn hillside. But wait, what was that
variety of metal tree? An antenna had emerged from the
ground and over to the left an anonymous large

Entrance to the monitoring station

camouflaged piece of equipment scanned the surrounding
seas. The uninitiated members of the group were then
amazed as hydraulic hatches opened from the horizontal,
uncovering laddered shafts to the bowels of the earth.
They had arrived at a small independent monitoring station
serving the larger fortress, cleverly concealed from the
prying eyes of their potential enemy across the Baltic.
The inspection of the site proceeded with everyone
clambering down into the bunker. The main entrance
hatch was in a hole one metre deep covered by a small
wooden shed. The vertical steel ladder went down four
metres to a conventional steel stairway which went down
for a further three metres. So at a depth of about eight
metres the floor of the top level of the bunker started.
This gave a roof cover over the whole bunker of at least
five metres. The whole bunker had been constructed in
a square hole drilled into the hard rock in plan of about
10 x 10 metres, going down for four levels under a rock
cap trimmed with concrete.

At the end of the steel entrance stairway was a short
two-metre horizontal entrance tunnel with restricted
headroom and blast doors at each end. As they stepped
from the blast protection tunnel entrance they could look
on either side of the passageway and see the air gap
between the walls of the excavation and the bunker. This
0.5m air gap helping to insulate the bunker, keeping it
dry, from the surrounding hard wet rock.

They continued into the top level of the bunker and to a
small chamber with a choice of two doors. Through the
left was a steel-walled chicane with gas-tight door, used
as a personnel decontamination area and the other door
went into the power generating room containing two Volvo
backup diesel generating sets. After passing through
decontamination they were into the top level of the bunker
proper. The square plan of the levels then became
obvious. A galvanised steel spiral staircase in a vertical
well connected all levels. When looking down through
the metal grids of the stair treads they could see all the
way to the bottom of the bunker, three more floors about
ten metres below.

Monitoring station internal stairway

On the top floor was the NBC gas filtering and air
conditioning room. The next floor contained the working
areas of the bunker with rooms for monitoring the
surrounding areas for potential targets to be relayed to
the artillery sites co-ordinated by the main fort.

Detection equipment in the monitoring station

Other rooms on this level included a communications room
and other technical support areas. Down one more level
the living accommodation was found with two rooms of
three triple bunks for the men and a small food prep area
and officers room.

The lowest level consisted of storerooms and pumps and
all the other equipment and machinery needed to keep
about twenty soldiers and the bunker happy and running
for 90 days of lockdown. A trapdoor in the lower floor
led to a water sump to keep the excavation dry and an
emergency exit in case the upper one was compromised.
This protected exit, running horizontally like an adit and
emerging further down the hill, had been used to remove
the spoil when the bunker had been built.

The 17 locals were given the tour in the Swedish language
while Carl switched seamlessly to English for the benefit
of the six conscripts from distant parts as soon as any
questions were raised. The bunker is complete and full
of all things needed to work, although the coffee cups
had been washed and were to be found back in their
cupboard in the kitchen area since the conscripts’ last
visit.

The party then got back into their transports and headed
to the Havstoudd 7.5cm battery, a small artillery fort
where overnight accommodation, food and a warm
welcome awaited. The weather had been quite cool and
overcast all day at about 5°C but now as the light began
to fade the true nature of the area in October showed
with the temperature plunging to hover just above freezing
- and then the wind got up and it started to rain.
Everyone quickly entered the small artillery bunker and
was greeted by a warm blast of air and the smell of
cooking. After stowing kit on their allocated bunks the
party assembled in the joint mess next to the kitchen for
the evening meal. In 1968 dishes were the same for all

32

KEY:

A - EMERGENCY EXIT
B • AIR INTAKE
C - FILTER ROOM
D - OFFICES

E - FIRE CONTROL WITH RADAR ON TOP
F - WC & SHOWERS

G • DORMITORY (2 - 6 BEDS PER SECTION)

H - SWITCHBOARD

J - TUNNEL TO TURRET WITH 7.5cm m/57 GUN
K - MEASURING STATION

A & B

L • TURRET WITH 7.5cm m/57 GUN
M - KITCHEN & WASHERS
N- STORAGE

P - WORKSHOP & GENERATOR
Q - DIESEL TANKS

R - FRESH WATER BORE HOLE WITH HYDRAULIC ACCUMULATOR
S - BLAST DOORS
T - DECONTAMINATION
U - ENTRANCE TO MINE STATION
V • MAIN ENTRANCE

»

i ' 'i h 111 r ~ i

mu m 171.

S &T

G F

HAVSTOUDD H02 BATTERY
WITH 3 x 7.5cm m/57 SINGLE
BARREL TURRETS

Drawn by Tim Robinson

ranks and they all served themselves. The conscripts
enjoyed a hot buffet of pork, cabbage, sliced potatoes
and bread in a delicious sauce followed by a Swedish
fruit pastry with cream and extra fruit washed down with
coffee and or beer. The ‘Royal’ brand of beer was
particularly excellent with an alcohol content fit for a
park bench. In a state of war the facility had available
copious stores of dried peas, gruel powder and canned
pork, lovely.

[The small group of conscripts self-consciously set an
extra place at table then poured a beer for Dan and
toasted “Absent Friends’’. We all hoped he would have
had a smile — Cheers, Dan.]

In 1968 smoking was allowed in many parts of the
installation. Mess rooms were used in the evenings to
play cards, sit and chat and a small shop provided a

Havstoudd battery mine control room

selection of home luxuries including moist snuff sweets
and evening papers. Our conscripts guessed that after
1980 smoking inside the bunker would become completely
prohibited.

After the meal everyone was allowed to familiarise
themselves with the fort. The hundreds of metres of
passageways and rooms swallowed up the 25 inspecting
conscripts and the cry of “where is everyone?” just
emphasised the scale of the facility. It contained three
gun turrets, a mine control room, a radar and
communications room as well as the accommodation and
service facilities, spread out on a roughly linear plan.
The fort would have had a complement of about 100
coastal artillery soldiers. The integrated area battle plan
also allowed additional infantry troops tasked with
guarding the outside mountainside to use the fort as a
logistic centre and place to warm up while on standby;
when operational it was a busy and crowded space. But
as soon as the enemy was expected the place was on
lockdown and the poor infantry were sacrificed to
defending the outside from their slit trenches and small
defensive positions.

The gun turrets and their operation had been explained
on previous visits so trying to understand the integration
of the mine control room was a particular challenge. From
this room strings and fields of sea mines could be selected,
armed or fired.

The sea mines consisted of several types including early
standard-contact tethered types, which relied on ships
or submarines knocking the hertz horns that contained
the detonators. Later developments allowed remotely

33

controlled influence mines, which sat on the seabed and
detonated if switched on when detecting the sound of
propellers (acoustic) or water pressure targets or
magnetic targets. Additional seabed detectors listened
for signals indicating an unauthorised intruder in a
restricted area.

Sea mines don’t need to contain a lot of explosives
compared with an air weapon to have devastating effects
against ships and submarines. On initiation an underwater
mine produces a pressure wave and an air cavity causing
localised pressure and blast effects; more distant
explosions produce dangerous water pressure damage
and the worst kind is damage from large nearby explosions
causing shaking from resonance.

Ships are blasted, pressured or shaken from direct contact,
infilling air cavity by water pressure changes, or shaking
of hull plate joints, respectively. All sailors hold these
weapons in great respect.

The control room covered a section of sea immediately
around the fort including the main deep-water channels
required by any invading force. Interestingly our
conscripts guessed that this type of defence would be
still active and viable for many years into the future after
the artillery forts had long become obsolete.

It was guessed that foreign submarines would continued
to try to penetrate the Swedish defences during the Cold
War with the more obvious ones like the Soviet U137 on
28 October 1981 beached in Gasetjardin in the Karlskrona
archipelego, and the Harsfjarden incident of October
1982 when an intruder triggered a trap using sea mines
as a perimeter and then the internal area was depth
charged - the intruder was never found. Useful things
these sea mine control points.

During the Cold War at least twenty incidents were
recorded in Swedish waters including the evidence on
the seabed of the use of intruder crawler submarines
that were also found to be used in Canadian waters. There
were also many false alarms like the time Uncle Bjorn
and I were out fishing and spotted a periscope, or was it
just the vodka? I forget.

One of the 7.5 cm guns at Havstoudd battery

Meanwhile, emotionally and physically worn out, our
conscripts headed for their bunks and fell asleep to the
sounds of forced air ventilation and occasional snoring.
The next day saw a hearty breakfast of cereal, toast,
jam, cheese, cold meats, boiled eggs, orange juice and
coffee disappear from the buffet and all kit quickly
packed and loaded into the Volvos for the move to the
large fort (Storaberget battery) on Jessica’s mountain.
The conscripts waved goodbye to their local bunker
colleagues and ten minutes later, escorted by Lars and
Carl, they were at the main gate of Hemso Fortress.
This place was extremely important during the Cold War.
The spy Erik Constans Wennerstrom (22 August, 1906 -
22 March, 2006), an officer in the Swedish Air Force,
had visited Hemso and caused a big scandal in 1963 when
it was discovered that he had sold military secrets to the
Soviet Union. He was convicted of treason in 1964 and
sentenced to life imprisonment, but served only ten years.
His actions had serious consequences for Swedish
National Defence. It was found that the plan of the fort
and several other defensive facilities had been detailed
by Wennerstrom. These were sold to the Soviets and a
Swedish strategic review caused a period of secret
rebuilding and reinforcement to many fortifications.
Another spy, Svante Eugen Bergling, this time from the
SAPO Swedish Secret Service surveillance department
(Moose Wranglers SE. Stockholm), worked at Hemso
for a short time and also sold secrets to the Soviets in the
70s. He was convicted of treason in 1979 and sentenced
to life imprisonment. He escaped from Norrkoping in
1987 during day release, changing his name to Sandberg,
and occasionally using Sydholt. Then with his wife he
moved first to Finland and then Moscow and finally to
Hungary. In 1990 as the former Soviet Union started to
crumble he fled to the Lebanon but in 1994 returned to
Sweden voluntarily to spend a further three years behind
bars; he was finally released in 1997. He could be still
reading this in 2009 -it’s a very very small world.

The main entrance to Storaberget battery.
Photo Nick Catford

34

: C<^P

KEY:

A - WATER & HEATERS
B - OFFICERS DINING & RELAX
C - KITCHEN
D - DINING ROOM
E - BLAST DOOR
F - MAIN ENTRANCE
G - BLAST POCKET
H • DORMITORY

J - 40mm m/48 BOFORS AA GUN
K - ALTERNATIVE ENTRANCE
L - MAIN BLAST DOORS

M- STORAGE

N - TURRET WITH 2 x 15.2cm m/51 GUNS
P - POWDER STORE
Q - SHELL STORE
R • CENTRAL COMMAND

S - MEASURING STATION. CURRENT FIRE CONTROL
T - MEASURING STATION. OLD FIRE CONTROL
U - GENERATOR
V - TOOL SHOP
W - EXITS

X - SURGICAL HOSPITAL & DENTIST

STORRABERGET hOi battery
WITH 3 x 15.2cm m/51 TWIN
BARREL TURRETS

Drawn by Tim Robinson

Meanwhile back in 1968 our conscripts had climbed the
hill above the fortress containing 320 soldiers and looked
out over the cold Baltic Sea towards the Soviet Union.
The fort was provisioned to be self-sufficient for 90 days
and designed to survive a nuclear attack and its
consequences. The new main entrance in 1968 was a
long slope with a pressure-deflecting dog-leg shape of
90 degrees. This had recently been added to improve
protection against a heavy detonation on the previously
unmodified entrances of the linear-designed fort.

The fort hospital had good facilities and was able to
conduct as many as six to eight major operations per
day, the medical supplies and instrumentation being
extensive. The hospital area was actually a bunker within
a bunker and was protected with overpressure valves
and discreet anti-blast doors. An internal power station
generated electricity with the main generator being a large
ship’s diesel engine - there was also a boiler room, water
system and ventilation air-conditioning, all fully
operational.

It was the information that Wennerstrom had given to
the Soviets that caused this redesign and addition of this
“shock wave passage”. At the end of the entrance slope
was a substantial concrete door of at least 15 tonnes
that would slide across when required and was
demonstrated by Carl to an impressed party.

On a previous visit a complete section of the fort had
been out of bounds - it was where stocks of emergency
stores for a further 600 men were kept. Today our
conscripts were allowed to enter this area, which from
the plan of the fort was at least a third of the total.

Diesel generator at Storaberget battery

If you were a spy in 1968 the most useful information
you could acquire after layout and facilities were the
capacities of men, power and water supply. An enemy
with this information could work out how long the garrison
could hold out. Food was also very important. The kitchen
of Hemso Fortress was known for serving very good
food: Swedish hamburgers, cabbage pudding, Swedish
beef stew and peas and pork were all on the menu. For
dessert, stewed fruit with cream or rice pudding was
popular, canned fruit and cream being the most popular.

35

The hospital at Storaberget battery

The kitchen at Storaberget battery. Photo by Nick Catford Storaberget battery accommodation corridor

The feature most memorable about Hemso apart from The only place of privacy was to be found in the toilets

the three excellent large turrets containing pairs of M/51 where men could sit behind a locked door in their own

Bofors 152mm guns and their supporting anti-aircraft M/ private space, reading Sauna Girls and dreaming of

48 Bofors 40mm is the main accommodation that extends home, power tools, the girlfriend, the latest Volvo,

along a corridor for 230 metres in a straight line, oh.... steaming meatballs, liquorice, etc.

and the three 20mm cannons on wheeled tripods. /, was w ith this bizarre thought that / awoke, being

It was this straight corridor with its simple exit at one gently shaken, and found myself looking into the tired
end that Wennerstrom realised could wipe out possibly eyes of a blue-coated stewardess asking me if I would

most of the men sleeping in the 350 beds with one large like to buy a scratch card.

detonation. Elsewhere in Sweden on different inspections Yes, it had all been a dream with only some of it true. 1

our conscripts had seen for themselves the excellent looked around and found myself on Ryanair s flight back

designs later incorporated in many other sites. The light t o London Stansted with 177 other passengers including

battery artillery site where they had stayed overnight had ot her Sub Brit members returning home after an intense,

the improved classic constriction and expansion chamber rewarding but tiring couple of days revisiting Jessica’s

arrangement for a simple personnel entrance. mountain, looking at Cold War Swedish Coastal Artillery

The thought of staying for the rest of this mobilization in Forts - just marvellous.

one of the small rooms with my other fellow conscripts Participants in body and spirit, in no particular order:

was somewhat daunting. They had two three-storey Bob, Steve. Dan, Tim. Robin & Jane and me another

bunks in each room. Each soldier had a small metal locker Bob: ahhh I nearly forgot, many thanks to Lars and

and a metal cupboard for storing clothes and personal Carl and also to Robin for last-minute trip co-

items. Their personal weapons were kept within easy ordination.

reach, in racks on the wall outside in the passageway. A11 photos by Tim Ro binson unless stated

One of the twin 15.2 cm
guns at Storaberget
battery. Photo by Nick
Catford

Return trip to the Warding bunker - April 2010

John Smiles

Codenamed “ZUN”, the ROTOR R3 Ground Control
Intercept bunker at Wartling sits on the first fold of the
South Downs as they rise out of the Pevensey Levels
south of Herstmonceux in East Sussex.

When operational, this position afforded a clear radar
view over a wide arc of the English Channel to watch
for incoming hostile aircraft. Its role, however, was short¬
lived, as within a few short years huge leaps first in radar
technology and then, later, jet propulsion rendered the
whole ROTOR system obsolete. Wartling was only
operational for nine years.

There had been previous radar installations in the
immediate area since World War II. The RAF Pevensey
East Coast Chain Home Station was established in 1939,
soon to be joined by the first RAF Wartling GCI station
which was developed in stages from 1941, originally
housed in (at best) semi-sunken, bermed and revetted
surface structures. Construction of the new protected
accommodation at Wartling started in the winter of 1951—
52 by excavating a hole 60m by 35m on two levels with
some 10-15m of top-cover.

The bunker itself was strong, but could not withstand a
direct nuclear strike. It was constructed as a box with
ferro-concrete walls, floor and ceiling in 3m-thick
concrete with tungsten reinforcements every 15cm -
enough to survive a near-miss from high-explosive pattern
bombing with the Soviets’ biggest contemporary
(conventional) ordnance.

Following completion of the structure, fitting-out took until
the end of February 1955, some two years late - a delay
that appears to have been caused by problems with water
infiltration. RAF Signals had four weeks of‘running up’
before the station went live on 28 March 1955 when
operations at RAF Wartling’s surface sites transferred
into the new underground R3 building.

Reminder of the water level in 2004, before pumping started

The very next year, a Decca Type 80 Mk3 search radar
was installed to replace the earlier Type 7. Almost
overnight this radar made the entire ROTOR air defence
system redundant with a range of 320 miles against the
90 miles of the Type 7 - both Wartling’s Type 14 radar
heads were dismantled. The Type 7 was replaced after
a fire and kept in reserve in case the new Type 80 failed.
Inside the bunker, similar downscaling was also taking
place with the full-height operations room at the heart of
the R3 design superseded by a small control room on the
top floor.

These technical advances also reduced the overall
number of radar stations required, so realising
considerable cost savings. In the Spring of 1958 all of
the Centimetric Early Warning (CEW) stations were
closed as were the six huge Sector Operations Centres

- freeing them up just in time for reuse as Regional Seats
of Government (RSGs). Almost all ground reporting
functions were then undertaken from the remaining GCI
sites. Locally, this meant that the single-storey CEW site
at Beachy Head was closed in May 1958 with Wartling
taking over its role.

In April 1958 the GCI at Wartling was upgraded to Master
Radar Station (MRS) status and from that date was solely
responsible for all UK air space from the Thames in the
north all the way down to the border with French airspace.
It also had direct links to other radar and command sites
in the UK, West Germany and France.

Further advances in radar technology introduced new,
higher powered radar sets throughout the early Sixties.
Of the six Master Radar Stations along the east coast,
all were refitted with this new technology except Wartling
and its importance then diminished until its role was finally
taken over by Bawdsey MRS in Suffolk in the Autumn
of 1964. The station was stripped out and closed on 3
December 1964 and was placed on care and maintenance

- for which read lock and forget - until its sale by the
MOD in 1976.

At point of sale, the bunker was still in excellent condition.
When inspected in 1970 the power was connected, the
lights worked and although the bunker had been stripped
of most of its equipment all the teak flooring was still in
place on both levels. There was no water ingress
anywhere.

When visited by Subterranea Britannica in 1987, the
bunker had deteriorated badly in the intervening years.
Several break-ins by vandals and metal thieves had left
their mark. All the windows overlooking the two-level
operations room had been smashed as had all the toilet
fittings. All the upper-level teak flooring had been
removed.

37

More seriously, the lower level was now flooded to a
depth of one metre in the corridor, corresponding to a
depth of nearly two metres in the aircon plant room and
Operations Room, neither of which has raised false floors.
As it was impossible to determine the state of the
floorboards in other parts of the lower level, no attempt
was made to enter any of the rooms but a photographic
survey of the lower level was made from the open
doorways.

On the upper level, a brick wall had been built across the
access tunnel from the guardhouse - this had been hived
off for residential conversion and was now barely
recognisable as a ROTOR entrance bungalow. When
the bunker was again visited by Sub Brit members in
1996, the lower spine corridor was now almost completely
submerged.

The bunker and surrounding land were sold for the second
time in 1989 but vandalism continued unabated until a
new secure steel door was fitted to the emergency exit
to prevent further illegal entry.

Help and cash poured in from the Sub Brit membership,
and with consents in hand from the Environment Agency,
we procured a pair of dewatering pumps (usually used
to keep excavations clear for construction) from a
specialist hire firm and plumbed them in on 11 August
ready to start work. Those who were SB members at
the time may have followed the pumping project through
our weblog and reports (still available on the SB website).
The pumps relentlessly sucked away for the best part of
the next fortnight, discharging water at a rate of just over
three litres a second onto the surrounding fields to reduce
the levels in the Ops Room to just below wellie height in
time for the Open Day on Sunday 22 August 2004.
Everything went approximately to plan and when we
opened up, the subscribers who helped pay for the kit
and power to empty the bunker enjoyed the first visit to
the lower floor since the floodwaters had claimed it in
the early 1980s.

The site was recorded and photographed, written up for
the website, and that was that.

There were plans to pump the bunker out in 1996. The
water was tested by the Environment Agency and was
found to be clean enough
to pump directly onto the
surrounding land. The
water level was reduced by
several feet but the pumps
were not up to the job and
couldn't reduce the level to
much below the 1987 level.

Work was abandoned and
the bunker was once again
allowed to flood.

In the Summer of 2004,

Sub Brit’s Nick Catford and
Bob Jenner convinced the
owners that the bunker’s
advanced flooding could be
better tackled and that the
water levels should be
dropped so that the site
could be properly recorded
for posterity. Thankfully
they agreed, and that’s
when I got the call to come
and do something about it.

Using a fairly novel process
for Sub Brit (first tried on
the unsuccessful public air¬
raid shelter dig we did at Epsom Downs in 2003), I issued
a call for subscribers to raise funds for pumps and power
and to call for volunteers to help keep the project rolling.
Back of a fag packet calculations showed that we had
around three million litres of water to shift to regain the
lower level.

1 have kept an eye on the bunker since, as I live fairly
close by. I pop in every now and again to say hello to the

owners, and sometimes help out by guiding their interested
neighbours round the bunker when asked.

In the intervening years, members of Sub Brit and the
other underground clubs and web-forums that I
occasionally frequent have asked about Wartling. As this
level of interest grew with the length of time since the

Robin Ware was the only person who came prepared for “access all areas”

38

The water level is once again rising in the air conditioning plant room

last visit, I decided to put together a follow-up Open Day
to allow more people to get inside the bunker and see
how it had changed over time.

In late 2009 I posted details on the Sub Brit Announce
List, and with KURG, Wealden Cave and Mine Society
and Barry at Underground Kent to gauge interest, I
started taking names.

And so it was that on the Saturday of the Easter weekend
this year, around sixty people armed with overalls, torches
and waders (don’t bother with Lidl’s £10 a pair offer -
several members couldn't resist but they all leaked)
descended on Wartling for a root around.

With this number of people, 1 ran the day in two sessions
to try and spread people out and preserve the bunker’s
air of quiet dereliction. This worked quite well and
everyone seemed to enjoy the opportunity of seeing the
site again.

Major changes since the last time we visited as a group
are threefold:

The removal of the water that was previously covering
the suspended floors on the lower level has opened the
way for all sorts of aerobic microbes to start consuming
the wood at a rare pace. Where one could happily walk
around many of the lower level rooms last time, this is
now a far more fraught exercise, and I think we
collectively punched several new holes though the floor
during the course of our day.

The water levels are rising inexorably thanks to the sloppy
demolition of the surface features of the services shaft
in the entrance tunnel. I reckon that they have risen by

about 75cm since 2004, although this rate
of ascent will now slow thanks to the
increasing floor area of the building once
the water tops the level of the lower corridor
floor.

Finally, the bunker has had an extension of
sorts after the party wall hastily erected in
the entrance tunnel by the occupier of the
bungalow was moved to align with the
correct extent of his plot of land; around
80m north of its original position. Apparently
surveyors and lawyers were involved.
Having seen the site plenty myself, I spent
the day counting people in and out, and
noodling around on the surface to precisely
survey the former site of the services duct
where the majority of the water is getting
in. This was found to be surprisingly close
to the surface (I think, but my surveying is
not so hot).

So now it’s closed up for another few years
with the water steadily percolating in through
the badly demolished services shaft. At the
current rate of fill, the pre-2004 levels are
still some way off but will ultimately refill
the bunker, and the basement of the guardhouse dwelling
along the way.

At the end of the Open Day 1 had a chat with the owners
about the long-term plans for the bunker. It is a nuisance
for them - especially following a recent spate of break-
ins put down to Urbexers after postings appeared on all
the usual sites (28DL et al) - but they do remain
sympathetic to its historical significance.

The main problem is of course the water, as the cosmetic
condition of the bunker is already beyond any hope of
recovery. I have offered to explore funding and executing
a decent repair on the damaged utilities shaft to stem the
How and then emptying the bunker on a more permanent
basis to preserve the structure. Following a protracted
period of silence, 1 had assumed that this idea was a
non-starter, but I have heard in the last week that they
are in fact interested in taking it forward.

To see where we go next (or if we go at all), I will be
arranging a surveying day in the near future to try and
establish exactly how far from the surface we are. If
digging and a reduced recasting of the shaft looks like it
might be feasible, I will put something up on the SB Lists
and elsewhere to call for help.

If anyone would like to register an interest in getting
involved before this - especially if you are local - then
please drop me a line. You can get my email address off
the SB email lists where I post occasionally, or I’m sure
the moderators will probably forward any messages on
to me.

All photos by Nick Catford

39

Sub Brit Maastricht trip report (or what I did on my holidays) 7-10 May 2010

bv Dom Aves

Pete (my little brother) put my name down for this trip
because he thought I’d quite like it - and hence I became
a bona-fide member of Sub Brit.

Day 1 Friday. Trains, tunnels, trains, waiting on
trains, food, tunnels, beer

Got to St Pancras International station; not too bad for
us because Pete and I stayed over in a B&B around the
corner. Several coffees later we were sitting in the
departure lounge wondering where the rest of the Sub
Brit group was hiding, not made any easier because this
was our first trip. Anyway we got on the Eurostar and
immediately realised that we had dropped the average
age of the group by a few years! The journey was
uneventful until we got to Brussels. We all had to run for
the train to Maastricht which then sat in the station for
an hour because of “material” problems and we had to
change again at Liege, which at least gave us the chance
to admire the splendid modern station canopy.

The 'Botel' our luxurious accommodation for the weekend.
Photo Clive Penfold

We were met in Maastricht by Joep Orbons, another
Sub Brit member, who had made all the arrangements at
the Maastricht end. Joep was accompanied by his son
Jeffrey, who brought the age of the group down even
further. A quick bus ride and we arrived at the ‘Botel’, a
quirky little hotel, created from an old river cruise-boat.
Basic is a good description - but at least it had its own
bar and lounge, and was within walking distance of the
city centre and our restaurant.

Off to the restaurant Witloof (means ‘chicory’ in Dutch,
rather than Mother’s Pride!) - very good food and drink
and the waiting staff weren’t too bad either.

Lacroixberg, medieval underground quarry (stone
mine)

After dinner, we went by bus again to one of the hundreds
and hundreds of limestone quarries in the area. We
travelled across the border to Belgium as access to
quarries in the Netherlands has become more difficult

recently - even to enthusiasts. The quarry is about 60
hectares in size and is under the village of Zussen. With
the rock being quite soft and the roof of the quarry so
close to the surface, it’s not uncommon for chunks of
real estate to disappear.

The galleries in Lacroixberg like many other stone quarries in
the area are of massive proportions. Photo Dominic Aves

One of the main features of this quarry is the large
number of writings and inscriptions dating to the sixteenth
century but probably older, possibly fourteenth century.
In the quarry’s more recent history it was used for storing
field produce and the growing of mushrooms and was a
good place to hide if one of the less friendly neighbours
decided to invade. A bat census has been taken in just a
part of the quarry and around 900 bats have been counted.
We finished the evening with a few drinks in the Botel’s
on-board bar, giving me a chance to chat with some of
my new Sub Brit colleagues. Joep and Jeffrey were there
(staying with us) and we discovered that Jeffrey had a
local girlfriend. Martin encouraged him to bring her along
to one of the site visits - watch this space!

Day 2 Saturday. Buses, tunnels, animals, beer
Up for a continental breakfast (give me a heart-stopping
full English any day). First visit was the World War II art
treasure store De Kluis - “The Safe”. It looks like it
was built only a few years ago. The actual vault is situated
in the Van Schaik railway tunnel and was built for the
safe storage of priceless paintings during World War II.
Thirty metres below the surface is national storage
location no. 9 which was the ideal place to store up to
800 works of art, including The Night Watch by
Rembrandt, The Steer by Paul Potter, and The Street by
Vermeer and with the vault being guarded by Dutch
military police it was a good place to have a secret radio
and a safe haven for the odd Allied airman hiding from
the Germans.

The rest of the tunnel network is massive, providing more
than enough space for the very small number of

40

Archive photo showing the entrance to the art treasure store
mushroom growers that are left in the area. We were
able to sample the sought-after ‘cave’ mushrooms. Pretty
much every underground space that’s not protected has
evidence of previous growers. Whilst we were dow n in
the vault a post-van went past which made me smile to
myself.

After a leisurely walk to Maastricht’s city centre park,
where there is quite a collection of animals in a small
children’s zoo, we had a packed lunch by the river Jeker
and the city walls. Thanks to Joep’s wife, Manuela and
her team for making us such an excellent spread for
lunch. Then it was off to the small portion of the city’s
casemates that remain. Towards the west of the city,
there are small portions of the fortification walls seen in
the Walderpark.

Waldeck Bastion Casemates
Although large parts of the fortifications were dismantled
in 1867, there is still a series of brick-lined casemate
tunnels (around ten kms), part of which is open to the
public, along with the Waldeck Bastion which contains

The Sub Brit party learning the history of the Waldeck
Bastion. Photo Clive Penfold

domed vaults, gunpowder magazines and lookout posts.
Between 1575 and 1825, a network of underground
passageways and mine galleries was created on the
western side of Maastricht. During times of siege, these
tunnels were used to approach and surprise the enemy
from under the ground.

Maastricht had a strong appeal to foreign rulers, thanks
to its strategic position alongside the Meuse. The city
was attacked and besieged on countless occasions. For
seven centuries, almost unceasing work was carried out
on building and maintaining the city walls, moats, forts
and other defensive works around the city. This resulted
in a labyrinth of cleverly laid-out underground
passageways, which could house army units of as many
as 5,000 men. Every soldier knew exactly what to do if
the enemy came within range.

It was not until 1867 that part of the defensive works of
Maastricht began to be pulled down, and Maastricht was
finally able to grow into the first industrial city in the
Netherlands. Large sections remained intact and were
later used as air-raid shelters, for example, during World
War II. An additional air-raid shelter was created in “de
Werken" during the coldest years of the Cold War, to
protect the people of Maastricht in the event of a nuclear
attack. The ventilation equipment, bunk beds and toilets
from that time can be seen in an exhibition. After the
tour we exited through what I can only describe as a
collective front garden, the sort you’d get in the posh
parts of London.

Tunnels converging on one of the domed vaults in the

Waldeck Bastion. Photo Clive Penfold

After the city casemates we were set free into the wild
and left to roam the streets and admire the fantastic
architecture. Wandering through Maastricht with my
camera I had the real sense of being in a cliche with all
the beautiful people sipping their elegant and sophisticated
drinks, juxtaposed by me - the big Welshman with a T-
shirt on.

Met up with the rest of the group at Witloof for another
great meal. Back to Botel and then out for more beer in
town. A small group of us had a quick look at the Basiliek.

41

A very sacred building where if someone should speak
too loudly it would be very frowned upon, never mind a
group of Brits laughing like a bunch of schoolkids. Others
of the group visited the funfair in the old city centre square
- enjoying themselves on the chair-o-plane rides.

Day 3 Sunday. Buses, big forts, underground feast,
more tunnels, more beer

Another day of underground mooching with a through
trip along a transport tunnel to Fort Eben-Emael and then
a feast in Keel Quarry with SOK and Van Schaik
stichting members and a free roam around the quarry.
And to finish, dinner and a presentation in the cellar at
Witloof.

The entrance to the transport tunnel at Lanaye.
Photo Clive Penfold

But, to start at the beginning. We all piled on the bus and
headed off to the entrance of the transport tunnel at
Lanaye. The transport tunnel is a double parallel
construction cut straight into the rock and is unlined. It
had an electric rail system used to transport waste rock
excavated during the widening of the canal.

We were able to look over the Albert Canal, which is in
itself a spectacular feat of engineering. Stretching over
129 kilometres between Antwerp and Liege it formed an
imported defensive line and made the eastern flank of
Fort Eben-Emael all but impenetrable. It was a nice

The two tunnels at Lanaye. Photo Clive Penfold

leisurely stroll through the tunnel which is the best part
of a mile long.

There was a lot of speculation as to why a double bore
was needed for spoil removal alone. There were
numerous cross-passages, so we were able to keep
switching from one tunnel to the other. We also saw a
shaft and the inevitable remains of mushroom farming.
We emerged in a field just over the road from arguably
some of the best fortifications in the world, Fort Eben-
Emael.

Fort Eben-Emael

Fort Eben-Emael was reputed to be the strongest military
stronghold in the world. On 10 May 1940, it was attacked
by the Germans as part of their blitzkrieg campaign on
western Europe. The speed with which the fort fell and
how the raid was executed was symptomatic of just how
devastating blitzkrieg could be.

A three way junction on the 60m (upper level) at Eben-Emael.
Photo Nick Catford

Fort Eben-Emael is north of the large Belgian city of
Liege. It commands the Albert Canal and was seen by
the Belgian military as being the principal barrier against

Martin Dixon with one of the 75mm quick-firing cannons
installed in the Vise and Maastricht fighting blocks.
Photo Linda Bartlett

42

The attack on Fort Eben-Emael

Fort Eben-Emael had one major weakness: it was vulnerable
to an attack from the air. The German High Command knew
that they had to capture intact the bridges over the Albert
Canal if blitzkrieg was to function. They also knew that a
paratrooper attack - so devastating in Holland - would be
unlikely to be successful at Eben-Emael as it would give the
defenders too much time to react as the paratroopers
descended. They therefore decided on a mode of attack the
defenders would be surprised by - the use of gliders carrying
troops. The gliders would land at half-light on the roof inside
the fort thus negating its defences. Such an attack would
possess a high surprise factor which would not be achieved
using paratroopers.

The attack had to be carefully co-ordinated so that it took place just at the same time as the main Wehrmacht attack
across the Belgian border. In this way, the Belgian army would be fully occupied and no units outside of the fort could
come to its aid.

Eben Emael in May 1940, shortly after
the fort was captured

The raid was full of risks. Take-off and landings were potential problems. When the gliders came within range of the
fort’s anti-aircraft guns, they were at risk. To compensate for the latter, the attack was planned at half-light making the
task of the glider pilots even more difficult as visibility would be a key issue. The plan was to release the gliders 20
kilometres from the fort at a height of2,000 metres. The pilots selected for the raid were considered to be the best and
were given a target of landing their gliders within 20 metres of their chosen target.

The attack was entrusted to the Koch Storm Detachment formed in November 1939. The main section of this unit was
comprised of paratroopers, including those trained in sapping. The actual attack on the fort itself was carried out by
these sappers led by Colonel RudolfWitzig.

The unit led by Witzig trained for six months for this attack. They were to use eleven gliders and the glider pilots were
also expected to fight in the attack. Each glider was to fly seven or eight men, excluding the pilot. Each glider unit had
two targets to attack. The sappers carried large quantities of explosives and weapons such as flame throwers.

The attackers landed at 05.25hrs on 10 May 1940, five minutes before the main attack across the Belgian border. To
confuse the Belgian military around the area, the Germans also used dummy gliders that ‘landed’ in areas around the
canal but served no other purpose but to confuse the defenders. Nine of the eleven gliders got through to the fort - one
glider being lost to anti-aircraft fire and one having to land just outside of Cologne as its tow-rope had broken.

The Koch Storm Detachment had given themselves just sixty minutes to render the fort’s munitions out of action. In this
time, they used large amounts of shaped explosive charges to destroy many of the gun emplacements in the fort and
captured a large section of it. Much of the complex remained in the hands of the Belgian army but by 11 May, the fight
was over as the advancing German army arrived in force. Confronted with an enemy literally within, and surrounded by
a massive army without, the defenders had no real choice but to surrender.

The attack was a success for the Germans as the fort was taken and the vital bridges captured intact. The Germans lost

six men killed out of the 85 who set out on the attack with
fifteen wounded. The Belgian defenders lost 23 men killed
and 59 wounded.

The attack on Fort Eben-Emael shows how blitzkrieg worked
within a small environment as opposed to an attack on a
whole country. The element of surprise was key, as was the
use of a method of attack not really considered possible by
other western European armies. The use of troops specifically
trained to become experts in explosives and parachuting was
also vital.

The defensive mentality of the Belgian army was exposed
by the success of the attack on Fort Eben-Emael. Such was
the secrecy surrounding the crucially-shaped charges used
that survivors were isolated in prison camps so that details
of the method of attack could not be passed on.

German paratroopers

an attack from her eastern borders. As well as the Albert
Canal, the fort also has a commanding position over the
high bridges over the canal. If the enemy captured these
bridges, their ability to move military vehicles and invading
troops would have been greatly helped. Without the
control of these bridges, such movement into Belgium
would have been severely restricted and the mobility that
blitzkrieg needed for success would have been blunted.
The fort itself is awesome. Bui It between 1932 and 1935,
it abuts the Albert Canal at Caster. From north to south,
the fort is 900 metres long and from east to west, about
700 metres. The fort was a base for infantry and artillery
units and the defences of the fort were placed so that
each mutually covered the other should the fort come
under attack.

Getting into the fort would have been very difficult. Two
of the walls are forty metres high and nearly vertical.
Climbing them in an assault would have been all but
impossible. The other sides of the fort were protected as
a result of a man-made ditch around them, again making
any assault difficult. To further complicate any assault,
outer trenches had been built and more walls, the majority
of which were four metres high.

The weaponry within the fort was also awesome. The
fort contained 7.5 cm cannons, 12 cm revolving cannon;
machine guns; searchlights; anti-tank cannons and anti¬
aircraft cannon. Dummy weapon emplacements were
built to fool the enemy.

centre. The tunnel complex was built with a ventilation
system complete with filters in case of a poison gas attack.
The building of the fort, which is mostly inside a hill, was
commenced in April 1932 as part of Belgium’s defences
against a second invasion (the country had been occupied
by Germany during World War I). The main tunnel
complexes and rooms are on two levels within the hill,
with stairways and ammunition lifts to the several gun
positions on the top and at the side. There are also three
false or decoy ‘ gun positions’.

The armament is reminiscent of that found in the Maginot
Line forts, with big rotatable guns under protective
cupolas which could be raised and lowered. The fort
remained off-limits in charge of the Belgian army for
many years. One of the lift/staircase shafts contains the
dramatic wreckage left by the huge power of the German
explosives used in the taking of the fort.

We also had a chance to explore on top of the fort, where
there was clear evidence of the explosive charges used
on the gun emplacements to render them inactive - it
was amazing to see the damage done to such heavily
reinforced turrets and cupolas.

DeKeel Quarry and ‘Picnic’

We all piled onto another bus and headed off to De Keel
quarry, then enjoyed another leisurely stroll along the
Albert Canal being careful not to get run over by the
many bikers that populate the area.

Damage to one of the lift shafts caused during the
German assault on the fort. Photo Nick Catford

The fort itself was connected within by a series oftunnels
that totalled many kilometres. There w r as only one access
to these tunnels at Fort 17 in the southwest of the vast
complex. The fort was effectively self-sufficient as it
contained barracks, sick bays and a communication

One of the huge entrances to the DeKeel Quarry.
Photo Clive Penfold

44

We'd been told that there was going to be a picnic at the
quarry, but it was more like a banquet with more food
than you could wave a big stick at and beer, juices,
coffees, tables and chairs. I and everybody else very
much liked the SOK and Van Schaik stichting idea of a
picnic - members of the groups had cooked their favourite
local specialities - including a dish of cave mushrooms
made by Ton Breuls. The spread was enormous and we
were completely stuffed afterwards!

We were then given free roam of the De Keel stone
mine which is accessed via the Albert Canal cutting, the
original entrance having been possibly destroyed by the
canal excavation.

Our underground ’picnic’ at DeKeel. Photo Clive Penfold

The quarry is simply enormous, with wide galleries and very
high ceilings and was worked on four or five levels, all in the
lovely honey-coloured local limestone. Amazingly, the quarry
extends beyond the international border underneath Dutch
territory, and the border is marked within the quarry (a good
opportunity for a group photo).

Earlier parts of this complex are around eighteenth-
century and were worked for building stone. In more
recent times the newer parts were worked as a limestone
mine, sending raw material via the canal to a cement
works. Examples of the extraction cuts can still be seen,
showing the different styles employed through the ages.
After a very good mooch around the mine, with plenty of
opportunity to take photos, we all walked back to the bus
and headed back for yet another great meal at Witloof
and a presentation from Joep in the restaurant’s cellar.
W’e reflected that tomorrow marked the seventieth
anniversary of the day of the German attack on Eben-
Emael.

Day 4 Monday. More buses, walking up hills,
tunnels, trains, and delays

After breakfast we took the bus over to Rijkholt which
is a small, very picturesque village on the banks of the
river Maas/Meuse, south of Maastricht, at the foot of
the chalk hills. Sint-Geertruid is the next village at the
top of the hill. We’re here to look at the flint mines which
are in a Dutch State Forestry and we walk along footpaths
through the fields to get to them. Lo and behold we are
joined by Jeffrey’s girlfriend - a very amicable couple,
but she’s a bit under-dressed for walking through forests
and going underground!

The presence of flint mines was detected in 1881.
Excavations here were conducted from then until 1964,
when a decision was made to investigate the mines
further in a novel way.

Between 1964 and 1972 mining engineers from the former
Dutch coal mines drove an east-west tunnel 150 metres
straight into the hillside, intercepting and giving access to
a number of mine galleries and 80 shafts, sampling a
mined area up to twenty metres wide. Today we can

look into the lighted mine
galleries through ‘windows’ in
the concrete-lined tunnel walls.
Radio carbon-dating indicates
that the mines were active
around 5,000 years ago.

Less intensively studied flint
mine areas are known
elsewhere in Zuid Limburg,
such as Valkenburg and Cadier-
en-Kcer. The site made an
interesting comparison to the
flint mines at Grimes Graves in
the UK which are managed by
English Heritage. Access into
one of the Grimes Graves mines
is from the surface and down
one of the original shafts, rather
than by the more modem tunnel
access here at the Rijkholt site

The Sub Brit party poses for a group photograph beneath the border between
Belgium and the Netherlands in DeKeel quarry.

The Sub Brit party at the entrance to the Zonneberg Quarry.
Photo Clive Penfold

the French train tracks back to the British tracks as we
slowed down quite a lot.

A bonus was that we had to stop in the North Downs
Tunnel and then the train crawled for another half an
hour. The guard said that there had been an incident on
the other line and our driver had to go slow to have a
look. This meant that we arrived late into London, an
annoyance to some of the participants as they had other
trains to catch, but apparently most of them made it OK.
So, we were finally back at St. Pancras station and went
our separate ways.

Tremendous thanks are due to all who helped over the
weekend, especially Jeffrey who did a lot of ‘running
around’ on his bicycle to help make the weekend run
smoothly - an intensive few days and a warm welcome
for me to Sub Brit, its members and its interests.

The flint mine at Rijkholt

Zonneberg Quarry

Next is Zonneberg quarry which is a trek up a punishing
hill rewarded by a rather nice cafe at the top and quite a
good view. After a quick break we all set off to the stone
mine.

Zonneberg, like Noord (the northern system) is part of
the huge Sint Pietersberg limestone mine (125 ha/375
acres). Unlike the northern part, it is an industrial quarry
dating back to late medieval times. The galleries are high
(up to ten metres). The upper parts are the oldest
excavations and the floors have been lowered several
times. The quarry was mostly used for building stone but
some areas were worked with picks for the loose chalk.
This carried on up to World War II.

In World War II the Zonneberg quarry was used as an
air-raid shelter for the majority of the population of
Maastricht. There are still a lot of artefacts left like the

bakery ovens, radio room, water tanks
and much else.

The shelter was used in September 1944
for a couple of days whilst Maastricht
was being liberated. During that short
period of time a baby was born. After
the war the mushroom growers moved
in and transformed the galleries by
clearing the floors. The quarry is named
after the farmyard that stands over the
entrance of the quarry and nowadays
is a major tourist attraction in
Maastricht.

Then it was back to the Botel for the
last time to collect our bags and catch a
train back to reality. The journey through
the Channel tunnel was made quite a
lot more interesting because I got my
big light out and had a look at the inside
of the tunnel as we sped along. We
could tell as soon we had changed from

One of the bread ovens built during WW2 when the quarry was used
as an air raid shelter. Photo Dominic Aves

An unusual underground air-raid shelter in Ipswich

by NickCatford

Air-raid shelters were built specifically to serve as
protection against enemy air raids. Cellars have always
been much more widespread in continental Europe than
in the United Kingdom and especially in Germany where
almost all houses and apartment blocks have been and
still are built with cellars. For this reason, air-raid
precautions during World War II in Germany could be
much more readily implemented by the authorities than
was possible in the UK.

In England, cellars were generally only built in larger
houses prior to WWI; after this time detached and semi¬
detached properties were generally constructed without
cellars, usually to avoid the higher building costs entailed.
Since house building had increased vastly between the
wars, the lack of cellars in more recent housing was to
become a major problem in the Air-Raid Precautions
programmes in Britain during World War II.

Domestic shelters become popular
Alternatives had to be found speedily once it became
clear that Germany was contemplating air raids as a
means of demoralising the population and disrupting supply
lines in Britain. Initial

on a brick base. They were sunk four feet deep in the
soil and then covered with a minimum of 15 inches of
soil above the roof. Anderson shelters were issued free
to all householders who earned less than £250 a year.
Over 1.5 million shelters of this type were distributed
from February 1939 to the outbreak of war in September.
During the war a further 2.1 million were erected.
Numerous other types of ‘back garden’ shelters were
built: these were usually of concrete construction and
nearly always above ground. It is very unusual to find a
completely underground domestic air-raid shelter.
Flowever, one such example has recently come to light
in the outskirts of Ipswich in Suffolk and was visited by
the author in July 2010.

A rare find in Suffolk

The Ipswich shelter is accessed from the garage of a
small detached house built in 1936. It is highly unlikely
that the shelter would have been built at that time so it is
assumed that the garage is a later addition and was
probably built along with the shelter shortly before the
outbreak of World War II. Examination of the electrical

recommendations were
that householders should
shelter under the stairs.
Later, authorities supplied
materials to households to
construct family shelters -
the most common types
being the ‘Morrison’ which
was an indoor shelter and
the ‘Anderson’ which was
sunken into the front or
back garden.

The Morrison shelter was
a steel cage that came in
assembly kits, to be bolted
together inside the home.
Around 500,000 Morrisons
had been distributed by the
end of 1941, with a further
100,000 being added in
1943 to prepare the
population for the expected
German V-1 flying bomb
attacks.

The Anderson shelter could
accommodate up to six
people and consisted of six
curved and straight
galvanised corrugated-steel
panels bolted together, often

IPSWICH SHELTER

Not to Scale - Drawn by Tim Robinson

47

The entrance to the shelter from the garage.

Note the pulley on the wall for pulling the door open

wiring in the shelter and the garage
indicated that they were probably built
at the same time. Adjacent properties
in the road are different so it is
impossible to make any comparison.

The garage is ‘L’ shaped with an
entrance at the front for a car and a
second way in from what appears to
be a later extension to the kitchen into
the shorter arm of the ‘L\

The underground shelter - which has
its concrete slab roof 4' 6" below the
garden - is accessed from the garage
where there is a steel door set in a
timber frame horizontally mounted over
a stairwell. The hinged door is opened
by a steel rope and pulley mounted on
the wall. A curved concrete stairway
with a handrail turns through 90
degrees, and at the bottom of the steps
there is a drain with a manhole cover
and a steel door into the shelter room.

There are three wooden shelves
mounted in the stairwell above the door.

Secure steel door
The door bears on the outside the maker’s plate of the
Milner Safe Co. Ltd. of London & Liverpool (now part
of Chubb who have a Milner range). It has a fabric gas
seal, a small circular glass window at eye level and an
externally mounted deadlock. The door can be secured
from both sides by six rotating latches, two on the sides
and one at the top and bottom.

The shelter room itself is circular, ten feet in diameter
and seven feet high with white painted brick walls. The
room is dry and is currently used by the householder for
storage. As you enter through the door there are nine
small wall-mounted timber lockable cupboards at head

height on the left side; each cupboard has a shelf. Inside
the middle cupboard there is a small wall-safe with a
mortice lock which was originally hidden by a false back
to the cupboard.

The emergency exit

Diagonally opposite the entrance door and slightly to the
right there is an emergency escape shaft with steel rungs
fixed to the wall. At ceiling height there is a hinged
wooden shutter under the circular brick-lined shaft; this
is made out of the front of an old loudspeaker cabinet to
ensure ventilation and is assumed to be original. The top
of the shaft is covered by a cast-iron mesh grille; this
originally opened into the garden but now emerges inside
a shed. Alongside the escape shaft there is a narrow
ventilation shaft which surfaces in the garden against
the shed wall.

On the left-hand wall of the shelter, just inside the
doorway, there are two light switches - one for the light

in the stairwell and the other for the light in the centre of
the room. There is a third light socket mounted on the
wall opposite the entrance; its purpose is unknown
although it may have been a pilot light for the tubular
radiator just above ground level running halfway round
the room either side of the door, with a thermostat mounted
on the wail opposite the door.

Alongside the thermostat there are two 5amp 3-pin
electrical sockets with two 2amp 2-pin sockets mounted
below the middle cupboard. Unfortunately none of the
electrical fittings now work.

All photos by Nick Catford

The shelter room. Nine cupboards are mounted on the wall on the left side
at ceiling level. The emergency escape shaft and ladder can be seen on
the far side of the room with a ventilation shaft to its right.

Note the tubular radiator just above the floor on the right

Warnamt - the West German Civil Defence warning centres

Translated from Wikipedia by Mike Barton

J The warning centres (Warnamt or
i WAs) in underground bunkers

k were established in 1957/58 due
to the threatening situation during
the Cold War. Prior to this, the
function had been performed by
the Federal Air Raid Association, a successor to the
Reich’s Air Raid Organisation.

Well into the 1990s, the warning centres were
responsible in the Federal Republic of Germany, that is.
West Germany, for alerting the population of potential
dangers both in peacetime and wartime and formed part
of the civil defence organisation.

They were subordinate to the Federal Centre for Civil
Protection, which in turn came under the German home
office. It was possible to avoid national service by
volunteering to serve in the WA for a number of years.
However, due to the limited numbers of such centres, it
was difficult to implement this.

Warnamt 1 in Hohenwestedt in May 2005

The ten former Warning Centres were located as follows

II. Bassum

III. Rodenberg

IV. Meinerzhagen

V. Linnich-Welz

VI. Butzbach-Bodenrod

VII. BadKreuznach

VIII. Rottenburg/Neckar

IX. Ansbach-Claffheim

X. Weilheim

When WA was dissolved in the early 1990s, permanent
staff were transferred to the Civil Defence organisation.
Initially it was thought that it would be possible to do
without a warning system. However, since 2000
research has been directed towards establishing new
methods of warning the Gennan population in the event
of danger. At present, a satellite-based warning system
is in use which can be used to transmit warnings to all
broadcasting stations simultaneously.

“Danger” in the early days was taken to mean air or
artillery attacks, and later on, nuclear attacks. To provide
protection against the latter, around 1,500 measurement

49

Wamamt V in Linnich in June 1984

posts were set up throughout the country to determine
the levels of radiation in the air. This network continues
to exist, but was transferred to the Federal Office for
Radiation Protection when the WAs were closed down.
The definition of “Danger” has now been extended to
include dangerous emissions from factories, etc. as well
as fire and other major catastrophes. To this end, new
siren signals were introduced under the aegis of the
German Post Office (heaven help us!), which was
responsible for laying and maintaining the lines and
renting the locations.

WORK OF THE GEOLOGIC

Like all Government agencies, the Geological Survey of Great
Britain (now the British Geological Survey) had its own
peculiar problems and special functions during hostilities.
Some notes on the Survey in wartime were published in
1947, from which the following samples are extracted ..
Extracts ...

With the outbreak of war routine mapping in the field was
suspended, the Museum was closed to the public, its
collections dismantled and in large measure eventually
evacuated to safe areas, the building itself converted into
offices for the accommodation of the Regional Headquarters
of the London Civil Defence organisation, and the energies
of the staff of the Geological Survey and Museum were
concentrated on work directly connected with the war effort.
... page 11

The siting of military camps, aerodromes, surface and
underground factories and storage depots is frequently
dependent upon adequate infomiation of underground water
supplies, of accessibility of sand, gravel, limestone or other
raw materials, or of conditions of soil or rock stability, all of
which can only be assessed by the intelligent inteipretation
of geological maps, literature, and the unpublished knowledge
of experienced geological surveyors. ... page 11
Field geologists were systematically withdrawn from their
normal work of preparing and revising the geological map
of Great Britain, and transferred to investigations immediately

In addition to the sirens, the WAs also ran the warning
network. This was a kind of telephone system capable
of transmitting warnings to all 12,000 warning posts
connected to the network. A number of major
companies were also obliged by law to be similarly
connected.

Each site comprised a fenced enclosure in a remote area
with an admin building, accommodation, comms tower
and the actual bunker. From the air the buildings looked
like a civilian facility. The bunkers were all of the same
design and were intended to provide protection for some
30 days. Nowadays, they are in private ownership or
used by the police or the TH W, a CD-type organisation.

Bundesamt
fur Zivilschutz
Warnamt 1

9 9

, SURVEY IN WORLD WAR II

and directly related to industrial and military activity, whilst
officers of the Museum and Library Staffs, possessing
specialist and bibliographical qualifications, were retained to
deal with the many enquiries which arose on the geology or
mineral resources of foreign territories of strategic or
operational importance. ...page 12
Miscellaneous Work

Apart from the matters already described, the Geological
Survey was called upon to deal throughout the war with a
wide variety of problems ...

The many engineering and constructional projects carried
out as a result of the war entailed considerable demands on
the Geological Survey for advice and infomiation regarding
such matters as sites for surface and underground factories,
aerodromes, hospitals, storage depots, air-raid shelters, and
gun-emplacements. During the construction of major
underground works visits were paid at frequent intervals or,
as in the case of an extensive series of tunnels made in the
Carboniferous Limestone of north-west England, a Survey
officer acted as resident consultant geologist. ... pages 17
- 18

SOURCE: GEOLOGICAL SURVEY BOARD, 1947,
Report of the Geological Survey Board for the year
1945 , with a note on the work of the Geological Survey
and Museum during the years 1939 - 44. HMSO: iii +
27pp.

50

West portal of Standege Tunnel

The other two trans-Pennine canals - the Leeds and
Liverpool, and Rochdale canals - avoided long tunnels,
with just a fairly short tunnel at Foulridge and impressive
series of locks such as the Five Rise staircase at Bingley.
The Huddersfield navigation closed in 1944 and the
Standedge tunnel sat empty but watered until it reopened
in the May 2001 after a lengthy and costly restoration.
Originally boatmen would leg their way through tunnels,
with a plank across the boat and a man with strong legs
either side - just imagine doing that for over three miles
through Standedge.

Later on the canal companies employed steam tugs to
haul boats through in convoy, and at the famous and still-
open Harecastle tunnel in the Potteries, electric tugs were
employed with overhead wires and a trolley pole on the
boat. As more boats were motorised the use of tunnel
tugs faded out although the convoy system with boats
was still used in some places.

If we confine our survey to closed tunnels, the next
longest was the Sapperton tunnel on the long-lost Thames
and Severn canal at 3490yds which closed in about 1914
due to collapses. The outside was visited on the SB
Cotswold weekend in 1996 and it is in a beautiful setting.
There are long-term plans to restore it as many parts of
the canal are back in water.

Sapperton Tunnel

On the branch of the Wiltshire and Berkshire canal that
connected with the T & S there was a tunnel at Cricklade
but this is now buried and the entrances built over.

The most spectacular canal tunnel on the Birmingham
Canal Navigations is Dudley which had underground
branches to the limestone mines; this was closed for many
years but is happily reopened, with boat trips from the
nearby Black Country museum’s restored wharf.

The Lapal tunnel on the Dudley No.2 canal was 3470yds
long and a handy southern bypass for Birmingham. It

Lapal Tunnel

closed due to mining subsidence in the 1900s and the
entrances are now covered over. Fortunately the other
big tunnel on the BCN network - the Netherton - remains
open to traffic.

The next one is very little known: the Norwood tunnel on
the Chesterfield canal at Killamarsh just west of
Chesterfield is, at 2884 yards, just short of the more
famous Harecastle (Telford) at 2926 yards. The
Chesterfield canal was well known for being used to
transport stone for the building of the Houses of

Canal Tunnels

by Keith Ward

As the English canal network developed, a need for
tunnels arose, especially on important new routes like
the trans-Pennine canals. Fortunately most of the main
tunnels are still open to navigation.

The most spectacular tunnel and longest was at Standedge
on the cross-Pennine Huddersfield narrow canal; at 3
miles and 420 yards long it took seventeen years to build,
opening in 1811. It was also located at the highest point
on any British canal.

East portal Norwood Tunnel

Parliament in 1834 on the section west of the tunnel, but
has been disused for many years. However a restoration
scheme is in progress with long-term plans to reopen the
Norwood tunnel, w hich closed due to mining subsidence
about 1920. The bricked-up west portal is visible but the
east end is covered over.

It is worth noting another long tunnel on the Thames and
Medway canal at Strood in Kent which had a gap
between the tw'o sections for a passing place in its 3946
yards length. In 1845 a railway was laid on the towpath
which was a unique situation; an engraving of 1851 shows
a steam train emerging with the canal alongside (see the
Middleton Press book Waterways of Kent and East
Sussex). In 1846 the canal was fdled in and a double¬
track railway laid which is now the main London to Strood
via Dartford route.

These are the longest disused tunnels but there are many
other tunnels on disused canals. A long-time disused one
is Greywell on the Basingstoke canal at 1230 yards.

West portal Greywell Tunnel

Although the tunnel has partially collapsed and is now
home to a bat colony, 32 miles of the eastern section of
the Basingstoke have now reopened, a particularly
impressive project.

The 375-yard-long Hardham tunnel on the Wey and Arun
canal near Billingshurst is now largely covered over. The
3063-yard Butterley tunnel on the Cromford canal had
partial collapses in 1900 and 1907 and traffic on the canal
ceased in 1944. The obscure Hereford and Gloucester
canal had a lengthy tunnel at Oxenhall near Ledbury at
2192 yards, long ago closed .

The smallest-bore tunnel was the Morwell Down on the
Tavistock canal (near Morwellham quay on the Tamar)
and over a mile long (2,450 yards). The canal closed in
1873 and the tunnel is now used as a water-supply route
to a hydro-electric power station.

There are many canal restoration groups and their
determination and accomplishments are remarkable. Who
in the 1970s would have thought Standedge would reopen,
and it will be an amazing day if
and when the 3817-yard
Sapperton tunnel on the Thames
and Severn (until 1811 the
longest in England) is reopened
by the Cotswold Canals Trust.
A good example of things to
come is the Ashby-de-la-Zouch
canal in Leicestershire, which
still saw narrowboat coal traffic
into the 1980s. This passes
through a 250-yard tunnel at
Snarestone then finishes in a
field. Restoration of the last eight
miles to Moira is under way.
Photos Nick Catford, except Lapal.

East portal Greywell Tunnel

52

Canada’s Emergency Government Headquarters aka Diefenbunkers

by Lars Hansson

Me and my girlfriend and young son travelled through
eastern Canada during June this year, having departed
Sweden with low-fare carrier Icelandair via Reykjavik
to Toronto. On the day after the arrival we picked up a
25-foot RV (motorhome) and started to travel towards
Halifax, from where our plane would leave in 20 days.
Toronto has an underground system of shops that might
interest SubBritters. Some 20 km of subterranean
pathways interconnects the inner city in a system known
as PATH. We mainly used this system as easy crossing
of boulevards and main roads

Like almost all of Canada’s provinces, Ontario also had
its “Diefenbunker”, situated north of Toronto inside an
active military base. The other main site in this area (to
my knowledge) is the NORAD bunker at North Bay
airbase. Even though 1 had a contact at North Bay that
was willing to show me the site it was not possible with
the schedule. After looking at the map, it was a 1000 km
detour!

My main interest is World War II and the Cold War but I
must say that the old fortresses made by the French and
the British around Canada are impressive, like those in
Quebec and Halifax. Now over to prime minister John
Diefenbaker (1895-1979). He was Canada’s thirteenth
Prime Minister - between 1957 and 1963 - and the man
who ordered the building of the system of nuclear-proof
bunkers all over Canada to serve as “Emergency
Government Headquarters”.

The system was made up by one main bunker and seven
regional bunkers. In addition almost sixty other even
smaller bunkers were made to feed information to the
regional bunkers. Because of the PM's role in the
construction that started in 1958 they were known as the
“Diefenbunkers”.

Organization map from inside Carp, showing the Carp site
and its six CRUs (Central Relocation Units), the six main
REGHQ (Regional Emergency Government Headquarters)
and four IREGHQ, the last without proper bunkers. RRU is
Regional Relocation Unit and numerous ZEGHQ (Zone
Emergency Government Headquarters) in basements etc.

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The list of bunkers all over Canada in the emergency
government situation centre in Carp
All bunkers were situated some 20-40 km outside a major
town and the main bunker was in the small town of Carp,
some 30 km west of the capital Ottawa, in Ontario. It
was officially named Canadian Forces Station Carp (CFS
Carp) and CEGF - “Central Emergency Government
Facility”. It was finished around 1960 and in operation
from 1961.

According to my guide there were some 150 people
working there constantly, with double capacity at war,
up until 1994. The site turned more and more into a
communications bunker as time went on and was never
used as an emergency HQ.

It is said that the PM’s only visit was in 1977 after hearing
that the food was excellent. As with 5001 and the other
main bunkers in countries around the world, the Carp
bunker never served its true purpose. It was also said on
the tour that Mr Diefenbaker wouldn’t have come to
Carp in the case of a third world war. As can be seen on
the tour the PM’s bedroom was very small and only
contained a single bed, meaning that even the PM’s family
had to stay outside. After hearing this, it is said that
Diefenbaker stated that he would take his chances
outside.

History shows his chances might have been equal to the
chances inside the bunker. Even though it was built to
withstand a Megaton explosion from 2km away, it was
well known by the Soviets. During the very secret
construction of the site a news reporter managed to hire
a plane and fly over the site, taking pictures and doing a
report with questions on what was being built in Carp.

Diefenbunker under construction
Even after the attempt of a cover-up from the military,
talking about a minor communications bunker, one of the
photographs showed a lorry with over sixty toilets being
transported down into the site. This of course told anyone
with a knowledge of bunkers that something bigger than
a simple communications bunker was being made.

A Tour of the Bunker

The site is located outside the town of Carp and can
easily be seen on Google by searching on “w carleton
public library, carp, on”. At the end of the road is the
small guardhouse to the left and a bigger building that
was a garage complex to the right. At the far end of the
helipad is the entrance to the bunker, with the modem
white outer house to disguise transports coming into the
site in the satellite era. The exit of the entrance tunnel
can also clearly be seen as well as the fortified garage
close by. Further to the northwest is another above¬
ground structure that was the mess hall.

The main entrance to CFS Carp

The whole bunker is square and all four floors have the
same size of approx 25 by 25 metres. The whole thing is
stabilized by six by six columns that ran through all four

floors - and can be seen on the construction photos on
www.diefenbunker.ca. The entrance tunnel goes through
the whole sand hill and out on the other side and in the
middle are the two entrances, one for personnel and one
for goods, each of 2.5 tons.

The tunnel is only made of congregated steel and would
collapse after a bombing ran. The site was designed for
30 days’ use and after that the PM and other important
personnel would be evacuated by a helicopter that was
stored in a nearby fortified garage. The problem was
how to get out... The solution was that a few volunteers
would climb the emergency exit, and go to the garage
where there was a bulldozer. They would then bulldoze
out the collapsed entrance and open the main door.

The group enters the bunker from the entrance tunnel

Another interesting thing about the entrance area is the
guardhouse at the gates. It was believed that the bunker
would be rushed by civilians in the case of war and they
had their orders to stop anyone by all means. To be able
to do this they had a small shelter under the guardhouse
and even a periscope to be able to view what happened
on the helipad and around the entrance.

The tour starts with a short stop on the top floor (400
level) with the decontamination system that everyone had
to go through after an attack. There were two showers
with a test station afterwards. If you were important you
could get another chance. Otherwise, if the levels were
too high, you were forced outside again. One detail that
I hadn’t seen before was the sealed compartment where
the contaminated clothes would be thrown into and left
for eternity. In the same area of the top floor was also
the hospital area with a smaller surgical room as well as
an X-ray facility.

We then moved all the way down to the 100 level through
one of the two main stairways. This lowest level is pretty
much generators and air conditioning units, together with
storage areas. All four generators were stripped out
before the museum took over but they have managed to
get one back. One small error occurred when it was
installed again after the transport - it was set up the
wrong way round!

The last major part of level 100 is the vault for the Bank
of Canada. According to the guide the gold was brought
out of the vaults in downtown Ottawa for transport to

54

Carp during the Cuba missile crisis, but whether this is to
make the story better, I don't know.

What I do know is that the vault itself is magic! The
personnel blast doors on the top floor are 2.5 tons but
this one is 10 tons, with a smaller one of 5 tons! The door
has four combinations, each one only known by a handful.
With this massive weight and the overpressure in the
bunker, a smaller “door” was installed only to equal the
pressure so the main door could be opened.

The vault is also a “bunker in the bunker”, although not
hanging on dampers as in 5001. But this one is separated
from the main bunker with a space wide enough to walk
in. This was made so that someone drilling into the bunker
would find themselves in the gap between and need to
force another wall. With genius mirrors in all four corners
every move could be seen by a single guard standing at
the main door. When he got bored he could wave to
himself!

The 10-ton door into the vault where there is a small display
about the start and end of the Cold War, a stone from

Hiroshima and one from the Berlin Wall

Level 200 is food, dormitories and sanitation for the whole
personnel, except the highest in rank. The kitchen is fully
capable of serving the more than two hundred staff, with
three big freezers just behind the kitchen and many more
accessible by elevator from the lower level. The dining
area is nice and comfortable with a fake window
overlooking the Canadian wilderness. Dorm areas and
sanitation are split into men and women.

Level 300 is the heart and brain of the site. Along the
outer walls are officers’ bedrooms and offices and inside
the corridor is the “emergency government situation
centre” with two rooms, one a status section with reports
coming in from the various regions and one nuclear section
with fallout maps for the whole country. Surrounding
these rooms are communications and computer rooms.
Back-to-back to these rooms are the main conference
rooms with multiple TV screens where the PM should
lead the meeting. There are TV cameras in both the
situation rooms to be able to send in information. The
PM’s small office, secretary and private bedroom are all

close by and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
(CBC/Radio Canada) has a small studio on the same
level.

Everything looks to be left as it was or brought back in
and placed in the correct spots. There are no dolls or

The conference room with the PM’s chair in the far end.
Canada's six time zones have one clock each, as well as
GMT, the standardized war time in NATO

anything extraordinary on level 100 to 300 and even the
big EMP-protected computer room has many old-
fashioned computers and servers left behind. On the tapes
stored here during 1982 and 1992, “Canada’s national
secrets” were stored.

On level 400 the museum has made a big and splendid
exhibition about the Cold War, civil defence and many
other things concerning life in Canada and in the bunker
during a nuclear war. 1 was very pleased with this way
of doing it. leaving three floors as they were and
converting ninety percent of a level that was mainly
offices and dorms to exhibitions.

After almost two hours (the tour should be one hour)
inside, I went outside to the family and started
preparations for the regional bunker in Debert. Nova
Scotia.

East to Nova Scotia

The small town of Debert lies 20 km west of Truro in the
centre of Nova Scotia, and 110 km north of the regional
capital Halifax. Canadian Forces Station Debert (CFS
Debert) was founded in 1941 and active until the mid-
1990s.

In 1964 the REGHQ CFS Debert was ready as Nova
Scotia’s Emergency Government headquarters. It can
easily be seen on Google by searching on “50 Lockheed
Crescent, Debert, NS”. The cover is about 50cm of dirt
above the 25cm concrete walls.

When the Cold War threat got smaller in the 1970s and
the bomb situation got better, the status of all the REGHQs
was put down and most of them were changed into
communications sites instead. The bunker at Debert had
the 720 Communications Squadron moving in and with
two sub-stations for receiving and sending, they could
communicate with Canadian forces all over the world.

The entrance to REGHQ CFS Debert

In the 1990s the whole site was converted into
Colchester Park and the bunker was left almost without
use, except in the summer when the Regional Gliding
School used its dormitories and offices. Since a few
months now it is owned by the Halifax-based Bastionhost
and will very soon be converted into a server hall of huge
proportions.

Situated on the great circle between Europe and North
America and with fibre-optics going all the way into the
bunker, it is intended to be a data centre for information
that can’t be stored inside the U.S. after the Patriots
Act. Hopefully the nearby Debert military museum can
do some limited tours of the site in the future but probably
not the whole site (and with limited photo opportunities).
Touring the Debert Bunker

The main entrance goes straight in towards the bunker,
with blast traps ahead of the main blast door (now
removed). As in Carp there is a decontamination system
on one side. After the main door you find yourself at the
main staircase between the two floors. There is another
smaller staircase at the other end of each floor, also
connecting to an emergency exit.

The top floor (200 level) is mainly dormitories and
sanitation, together with the control room and air-
conditioning equipment. There is a small hospital with
the most necessary things, kitchen and dining hall as well
as a small vault. The men’s room is the fanciest

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£

The small control room for the entire site.
Now also Pam’s office (Bastionhost)

washroom I’ve seen in a bunker, fully covered in tiles
and in mint condition. There is also a floor above this
level for air intake and huge pre-filters for the huge air-
conditioning units downstairs.

Downstairs is the heart and brain of the site. Almost one-
fifth of the level is mechanicals, with three main diesel-
powered generators. These were supposed to be able to
start with batteries but that failed and they installed a
smaller diesel engine just to start the bigger engines. All
the ventilation and electricity installations are intact and
running.

The rest of the lower floor is either stripped out and/or in
bad condition. As in Carp there are some dormitories
and offices close to the operations rooms and conference
room for the “Premier, Lieutenant-Governor and top
military officials and their aides”, as it is stated on the
local museum webpage.

Again as in Carp there is a big communications room,
fully EMP-protected and stated as a SAMSON node on
maps. There is also a small CBC studio for broadcasting.

Overview

Both these bunkers are in good condition overall. They
are quite different in the making, presumably because
the Carp one was built first and they learned a few things
along the way when designing the other smaller one.
The two-level building was easier designed and easier to
find the way around. I found it more crowded in the four-
level bunker, perhaps because the area on each floor
that was used for cables and wiring inside the walls had
to be bigger as well as the columns holding up the heavier
structure.

I can recommend a trip to eastern Canada, not only for
the bunkers and fortresses but also for the people and
the landscape. We ended our trip in Halifax, the well-
known harbour and rendezvous for the convoys to Europe
and Murmansk during the war. The harbour has a navy
museum and a remembrance stone for all the Norwegian
sailors that were lost during the conflict.

Halifax is also the place in eastern Canada for modem
coastal artillery. If I had known that before looking in the
museum at the fortress, 1 would have spent more time
here. There were numerous batteries along the harbour
mouth, many older but also modern World War Il-era
guns, radar-controlled from an underground command
centre at York Redoubt. Many of these sites are now
incorporated into the Halifax Defence Complex.

My thanks to Pam and Anton at Bastionhost for their
hospitality, and Marie and Axel for their patience.
Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_center

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diefenbunker

http://www.debertmilitarymuseum.org/

http://www.diefenbunker.ca

http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng//lhn-nhs/ns/york/index.aspx
All photos by Lars Hansson

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